Thread: USA Freedom Act moves forward in Senate, but amendment battle looms

USA Freedom Act moves forward in Senate, but amendment battle looms

Erin Kelly, USA TODAY11:30 a.m. EDT June 2, 2015


(Photo: Timothy D. Easley, AP)

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted Tuesday to advance a bill to rein in the National Security Agency's surveillance powers, but a clash over possible amendments to the bill threatened to derail the bipartisan legislation.

Senators voted 83-14 to move to a final vote on the USA Freedom Act, which is expected Tuesday after votes on amendments.

The bill would end the NSA's bulk collection of the phone data of millions of Americans not suspected of any terrorist activity. Instead, phone companies would retain the data and the NSA could obtain targeted information about individuals with permission from a federal court. The bill would renew other provisions of the Patriot Act anti-terrorism law through 2019.

Three key provisions of the Patriot Act expired at midnight Sunday as the Senate continued to debate the legislation.
Senate security hawks, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., initially opposed the USA Freedom Act and sought to renew the Patriot Act without changes through 2020. When it became clear that there was not enough support for that plan, the two leaders began offering amendments to the USA Freedom Act.

The proposed amendments include extending the period for the bulk phone collection program to wind down from six months to 12 months to give the NSA and phone companies more time to switch over the data collection to the phone companies. Another amendment would require telecommunications companies to give Congress six months' notice if they intend to change their data retention procedures. A separate change would require the director of national intelligence to certify that the new data retention process is working.



USA TODAY
Senate hopes to pass amended USA Freedom Act; House may balk


McConnell said Tuesday that the proposed changes were "modest safeguards" designed to make the revised Patriot Act work better.

"Before scrapping an effective system that has helped protect us from attack in favor of an untried one, we should at least work toward securing some modest degree of assurance that the new system can, in fact, actually work," he said.

Critics – including bipartisan leaders of the House Judiciary Committee – said the changes would weaken the bill and undermine support by privacy rights advocates. The House overwhelmingly passed the USA Freedom Act on May 13 by a vote of 338-88, and House members are likely to resist any effort by the Senate to change the bill. President Obama has said he would sign the bill as passed by the House.



USA TODAY
Obama team to Senate: Act on surveillance laws


Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said the USA Freedom Act protects national security while respecting Americans' privacy rights.

"The American people intuitively understand that it's nobody's business who they are calling," Lee said.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/p...vote/28345747/

I cannot help but wonder, are telephone service prices going to go up? If congress mandates a new service you know we will pay for it. I do not think that the Constitution authorizes business management to Congress!

If nothing else the line fees will increase because of the new push for Obama new smartphones and all the hundreds of thousand of illegals that are using them.

Your phone bill might not go up

but your taxes might.


ATT, Verizon, Sprint Are Paid Cash By NSA For Your Private Communications

Robert Lenzner
CONTRIBUTOR

The National Security Agency pays AT&T, Verizon and Sprint several hundred million dollars a year for access to 81% of all international phone calls into the US, according to a leaked inspector general’s report, which has been reported by the Washington Post, AP, and the New York Review of Books. In fact., this secret report says that “NSA maintains relationships with over 100 U.S. companies, underscoring that the U/S. has the “home-field advantage as the primary hub for worldwide communications,” the New York Review of Books reported in its August 15 issue. These secret cooperative agreements reveal that NSA pays surveillance fees to telcos and phone companies were first made public by Edward Snowden, the former NSA administrator, now resident in Russia.

AT&T charges $325 for each activation fee and $10 a day to monitor the account, according to the AP. Verizon charges $775 per tapping for the first month and then $500 a month thereafter, according to the Associated Press today. The article reported that Microsoft, Yahoo and Google refused to say how much they charged to allow the government to tap into emails and other non-telephonic communications.

In a separate report the Washington Post reported that NSA pays the telcos roughly $300 million annually for access to information on their communications; where and when they occurred, the identity of the person called and how long the conversation lasted. This surveillance is accomplished by tapping into “high volume circuits and packet-switched networks.” The ability to obtain this information was authorized by the US Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, passed in 1994 by the Clinton administration.

While $300 million for giant telephone companies is only a slight fraction of their overall revenues, it is quite a shocking revelation to think that the telcos consumers pay every month to hook them up with the world are also being paid by the U.S. government to maintain watch over our daily communication whether over wired instruments or unwired communications equipment like I pads and cell phones. Snowden recently released information by means of a slide which revealed that the government ” was able to access real-time-data on the live voice, text, e-mail, or internet chat services, in addition to analyzing stored data.” (like your Facebook account)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertle...ommunications/

http://www.alipac.us/f19/apple-inc-c...er%92s-320026/ Privacy