Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Rand Paul helps kill fraudulent ‘USA Freedom Act’

The ‘USA Freedom Act’ Is A Fraud by Justin Raimondo -- Antiwar.com:

November 17, 2014 - "The 'Freedom Act' is quite free with its Orwellian redefinition of common words to mean the exact opposite of what they have traditionally meant: for example, the bill defines a 'selector' in such a way as to permit NSA to report a dragnet order collecting everyone’s VISA bill as a single order targeting specific alleged terrorist outfits – when, in the real world, it would legalize surveillance of over 300 million US citizens....

"The bill actually weakens these existing minimization procedures: instead of encoding them in law it hands the job of devising 'privacy procedures' to the Attorney General, rather than the FISA court. What this means is that, under the proposed legislation, if the court found the NSA or other government agency spying on an individual (and his or her network of friends and acquaintances) because they engaged in constitutionally protected speech, the court would no longer have the authority to demand the destruction of those records. This is a giant step backward...

"Some civil liberties groups, like the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, argue that the present bill is 'a first step,' and is better than nothing. This is nonsense: this bill is worse than nothing.... If this bill passes, the Washington insiders will win out, and the Surveillance State will remain intact – arguably even more powerful than before."

Read more: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2014/11/16/the-usa-freedom-act-is-a-fraud/
'via Blog this'


Libertarian Champion Rand Paul Helped Kill NSA Reform Bill - Matt Sledge & Ryan Grim, Huffington Post:

November 18, 2014 - "The USA Freedom Act, sponsored by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), received 58 votes on Tuesday night -- two short of cloture, the magic number in the Senate that allows a bill to proceed to an actual roll call.... Paul said he voted against the bill because it would have extended the Patriot Act provision that allows the NSA to search Americans’ phone records. He has consistently opposed the Patriot Act, passed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks."

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/18/rand-paul-nsa-reform-bill_n_6182204.html

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