{"id":8114,"date":"2015-05-14T06:04:36","date_gmt":"2015-05-14T11:04:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8114"},"modified":"2015-05-14T06:04:36","modified_gmt":"2015-05-14T11:04:36","slug":"usa-freedom-act-passes-house-codifying-bulk-collection-for-the-first-time-critics-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8114","title":{"rendered":"USA Freedom Act Passes House, Codifying Bulk Collection For the First Time, Critics Say"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/firstlook.org\/theintercept\/2015\/05\/13\/usa-freedom-act\/\" target=\"_blank\">USA Freedom Act Passes House, Codifying Bulk Collection For the First Time, Critics Say<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>After only\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/rules.house.gov\/sites\/republicans.rules.house.gov\/files\/HR1735gdHR2048HR36rule.pdf\">one hour of floor<\/a>\u00a0debate, and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/firstlook.org\/theintercept\/2015\/05\/13\/house-reform-committee-thwarts-effort-add-privacy-protections-nsa-reform\/\">no allowed amendments<\/a>, the House of Representatives today passed legislation that seeks to address the NSA\u2019s controversial surveillance of American communications. However,\u00a0opponents believe it may give brand new authorization\u00a0to the U.S. government\u00a0to conduct domestic dragnets.<\/p>\n<p>The USA Freedom Act was approved in a 338-88\u00a0vote, with approximately equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans voting against. The bill\u2019s supporters say it will disallow\u00a0bulk collection\u00a0of domestic telephone metadata, in which the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has regularly\u00a0ordered phone companies to turn over such data. The Obama administration\u00a0claims such collection\u00a0is authorized by Section 215 of the USA Patriot\u00a0Act, which is set to expire June 1. However, the U.S.\u00a0Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently held that Section 215 does not\u00a0provide such authorization.<\/p>\n<p>Today\u2019s\u00a0legislation would prevent the government from issuing such orders for bulk collection and instead force it to rely on\u00a0telephone companies to store all their metadata \u2014 some of which\u00a0the government could then demand using a\u00a0\u201cspecific selection term\u201d related to foreign terrorism. Bill supporters maintain this would\u00a0prevent indiscriminate collection.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA vote in favor of this bill is a vote to end dragnet surveillance in the United States,\u201d Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., a co-sponsor of the legislation, claimed on the House floor ahead of the vote.<\/p>\n<p>However, the legislation may not\u00a0end bulk\u00a0surveillance\u00a0and in fact could codify the ability of the government to conduct dragnet\u00a0data collection.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\">\u201cWe\u2019re taking something that was not permitted under regular section 215 \u2026 and now we\u2019re creating a whole apparatus to provide for it,\u201d Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., said on Tuesday night during a House Rules Committee proceeding.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>USA Freedom Act Passes House, Codifying Bulk Collection For the First Time, Critics Say After only\u00a0one hour of floor\u00a0debate, and\u00a0no allowed amendments, the House of Representatives today passed legislation that seeks to address the NSA\u2019s controversial surveillance of American communications. However,\u00a0opponents believe it may give brand new authorization\u00a0to the U.S. government\u00a0to conduct domestic dragnets. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3353,551,577,746,765,4393,4810,5262],"class_list":["post-8114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-metadata","tag-national-security-agency","tag-nsa","tag-spying","tag-surveillance","tag-us-house-of-representatives","tag-usa-freedom-act","tag-usa-patriot-act"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8115,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8114\/revisions\/8115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}