It’s official: the USA FREEDOM Act is just a destructive as the USA PATRIOT Act
My general rule of thumb when it comes to legislation is that the more high-sounding the name, the more insidious the law.
Exhibit A: the just-passed USA FREEDOM Act.
“Freedom”. It sounds great.
So great, in fact, that they stuck it in the title and built an absurd acronym around it– the real name of the law is “Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ensuring Effective Discipline Over Monitoring Act of 2015″.
U-S-A-F-R-E-E-D-O-M. Hooray!
And without fail, the media has bought in to the myth, praising the government for heralding in a new era of liberty with headlines like “Congress Reins In NSA’s Spying Powers” and “NSA phone program doomed as Senate passes USA Freedom Act”.
Unfortunately this is simply not the case. And shame on the mainstream media for making such thinly-researched, fallacious assertions.
If anyone had actually taken the time to read the legislation, they’d see that most of the ‘concessions’ made by the government are entirely hollow.
Secret FISA courts still exist. Lone wolf surveillance authority and roving wiretaps still exist. They can still grab oodles of other data like medical and business records.
And the US Attorney General has even been awarded new ’emergency powers’ to use in his/her sole discretion… just in case the secret courts might be uncooperative.
The big victory being cheered by the media pertains to the collection of phone records. This one is actually hilarious.
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