Comment by efuquen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by efuquen | Hacker News Reader

I think the headline here is misleading and focuses on the wrong vote. There were two votes here 1) to extend the Patriot Act by two months and 2) to pass the USA Freedom Act (which would supersede the Patriot Act).

The extension vote was opposed by Democrats and supported by most Republicans while the USA Freedom Act was supported by all democrats and opposed by most Republicans. While it is indeed good that the Patriot Act wasn't extended this is the consolation prize of the actual worse news that the USA Freedom Act didn't pass.

While the USA Freedom Act isn't perfect, and was weakened in the House [1], it is still far far better than the Patriot Act has meaningful reforms. It also still has the support of the EFF [1]. Overall, it's failure to pass is bad news and could lead to an even worse bill.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Freedom_Act#Reaction

But this isn't a binary choice between the USA Freedom Act and the Patriot Act. From what I can see the best thing to do would be to let the Patriot Act expire and replace it with nothing. The government is very short on evidence the powers in that law have resulted in thwarted terrorist attacks.

It's not like sans Patriot FBI agents will sit around making paper airplanes.

Actually, EFF (and ACLU) pulled their support from USA Freedom after the Second Circuit court ruling [1]:

"In light of the Second Circuit’s decision, EFF asks Congress to strengthen its proposed reform of Section 215, the USA Freedom Act. Pending those improvements, EFF is withdrawing our support of the bill. We’re urging Congress to roll the draft back to the stronger and meaningful reforms included in the 2013 version of USA Freedom and affirmatively embrace the Second Circuit’s opinion on the limits of Section 215."

And, your link [1] is to a discussion of last year's version of the USA Freedom Act.

It's important to note that the opposition to the USA Freedom Act contains two distinct factions: The so called "defense hawks" led by Mitch McConnell, who want to renew section 215 Patriot Act (that is to say they want bulk collection to continue) and the Rand Paul camp, who say that the USA Freedom act doesn't go far enough and are happy to let section 215 lapse without any replacement.

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