NSA

House overwhelmingly passes USA Freedom Act, Senate GOP opposed

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The House by a 338-88 vote overwhelmingly approved the USA Freedom Act, which would prevent the NSA from collecting metadata about the phone numbers people dial and when their calls are placed. The bill faces opposition from GOP leaders in the Senate.

The Hill reports, House backs NSA reform, 338-88:

NSA-SpyingForty-seven Republicans and 41 Democrats opposed the bill. [Roll call not yet posted.]

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The politics surrounding the NSA’s surveillance programs are scrambled, and the Senate has just two weeks before the existing law authorizing the NSA’s metadata collection expires.

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While the White House backs the USA Freedom Act, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has led opposition to it in the upper chamber and supports extending Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which authorizes the collection of metadata, without reforms. [The Second Circuit Court of Appeals last week ruled that Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act does not authorize metadata collection.]

McConnell’s allies include Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the White House hopeful.

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Federal Gov’t Spying on Citizens: Big Brother Really Is Watching

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Keyboard-578-adj-crop-sig-sm72by Pamela Powers Hannley

Several weeks ago, after the US intelligence agencies found the Boston Marathon bombers in a matter of days, I posted this story: Who Is Homeland Security Watching? Off-the-grid Fertilizer Plant vs On-the-Grid Citizenry.

When I said that the federal government was watching “real people, not corporate people,” I had no idea how prophetic that statement was. In the few short weeks since that story, there has been one revelation about government spying on American citizens and news organizations after another.

Gov’t Obtains Wide AP Phone Records in Probe
First we learned that the feds obtained months worth of telephone records from Associated Press (AP) reporters. AP called this “a ‘massive and unprecedented intrusion’ into how news organizations gather the news.”

US gov’t collecting huge number of phone records
Although there was a huge media uproar over the AP story when it broke, it pales in comparison to what we learned this week. Senator Diane Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, confirmed that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been collecting cell phone records for millions of Americans on a regular basis for years. This ongoing surveillance of American citizens began during the warrantless wiretapping program initiated under President George Bush’s reign. Verizon, Sprint, and At&T have complied with court orders to provide customer data. Verizon alone has 121 million customers. More details and links after the jump.