The Weird End of the NSA's Phone Dragnet

The House version of the USA Freedom Act is not an end to NSA spying, and that's one of the main reasons the Senate didn't pass it. Today's USA Freedom Act is significantly watered down from last year's version, and lacks the support of key privacy groups including ACLU and EFF (it is supported by the NSA and DEA, though). The USA Freedom is a fake reform bill that extends the PATRIOT Act and opens up new avenues for even more invasive spying.

Here are some gems from this so-called "reform" bill:

- The government can still use broad search selectors to target large portions of the population. They will be allowed to collect even more personal data from people "connected" to their primary targets.

- The bill expands the type of information the government is allowed to include VoIP calls and video chats, and likely will allow the government to access all data related to smartphone activity.

- Companies are rewarded with blanket immunity for sharing information with the NSA, even when they breach their own privacy agreements with consumers.

- The NSA can share data gathered for counterterrorism purposes with the FBI, which can then use the data for unrelated investigations with few meaningful limitations. This will allow the FBI to engage in parallel construction of criminal investigations unrelated to terrorism based.

- The public FISC advocate that USA Freedom creates for the FISA Court can be blocked from seeing anything the government wants to keep secret from them.

I'm relieved the Senate blocked this bill and hope this spells the beginning of the end for the PATRIOT Act. Check out my op-ed on The Hill for more info on why USA Freedom Act sucks: http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/homeland-security/242...

This is one reason that I favor sunset provisions so much. Most laws should sunset automatically without renewal.