{"id":8750,"date":"2015-06-03T06:00:43","date_gmt":"2015-06-03T11:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8750"},"modified":"2015-06-03T06:00:43","modified_gmt":"2015-06-03T11:00:43","slug":"one-small-step-for-nsa-reform-one-giant-leap-for-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8750","title":{"rendered":"One Small Step For NSA Reform, One Giant Leap for Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"hero\">\n<h3 class=\"title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/firstlook.org\/theintercept\/2015\/06\/02\/one-small-step-toward-post-snowden-surveillance-reform-one-giant-step-congress\/\" target=\"_blank\">One Small Step For NSA Reform, One Giant Leap for Congress<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/prod01-cdn00.cdn.firstlook.org\/wp-uploads\/sites\/1\/2015\/06\/Screen-Shot-2015-06-02-at-6.06.25-PM-article-display-b.jpg\" alt=\"Featured photo - One Small Step for NSA Reform, One Giant Leap for Congress\" \/><\/div>\n<div class=\"ti-body\" data-twttr-id=\"twttr-sandbox-0\">\n<p>Exactly\u00a0two years after journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras traveled to Hong Kong to meet an NSA whistleblower named Edward Snowden,\u00a0Congress has finally brought itself to reform one surveillance program out of the multitude he revealed \u2014 a program so blatantly out of line that its end was a foregone conclusion as soon as\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2013\/jun\/06\/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order\">it was exposed.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The USA Freedom Act passed the House in an overwhelming, bipartisan vote three weeks ago. After hardliner Republicans lost a prolonged game of legislative chicken, the Senate gave its approval Tuesday afternoon\u00a0as well,\u00a0by a 67 to 32 margin. The bill officially ends 14 years of unprecedented bulk collection of domestic phone records by the NSA, replacing it with a program that requires the government to make specific requests to the phone companies.<\/p>\n<p>After Snowden\u2019s leak of NSA documents revealed it, the program was\u00a0repeatedly found to violate the law, first by legal experts and blue-ribbon panels, and just last month by a federal appellate court. Its rejection by Congress is hardly a radical act \u2014 it simply reasserts the meaning of the word \u201crelevant\u201d (the language of the statute) as distinct from \u201ceverything\u201d (how the government interpreted it).<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, the Freedom Act explicitly reauthorizes \u2014 or, rather, reinstates, since they technically expired at midnight May 31 \u2014 other programs involving the collection of business records that the Bush and Obama administrations claimed were authorized by Section 215 of the Patriot Act. In fact, even the bulk collection of phone records, which was abruptly wound down last week in anticipation of a possible expiration, may wind up again, because the Freedom Act allows it to continue for a six-month transition period.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One Small Step For NSA Reform, One Giant Leap for Congress Exactly\u00a0two years after journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras traveled to Hong Kong to meet an NSA whistleblower named Edward Snowden,\u00a0Congress has finally brought itself to reform one surveillance program out of the multitude he revealed \u2014 a program so blatantly out of line [&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":[249,5437,5997,551,577,5998,765,1671,5380,1237,4810],"class_list":["post-8750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-edward-snowden","tag-glenn-greenwald","tag-laura-poitras","tag-national-security-agency","tag-nsa","tag-nsa-whistleblower","tag-surveillance","tag-us-house","tag-us-patriot-act","tag-us-senate","tag-usa-freedom-act"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8750","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=8750"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8751,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8750\/revisions\/8751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}