
Senate Blocks Patriot Act Extension - sinak
http://www.npr.org/2015/05/23/408927009/senate-blocks-patriot-act-extension
======
cb18
_The Senate struggled to prevent an interruption in critical government
surveillance programs early Saturday_

That is a very strange way to start this article. Consider to what type of
government, activity of this sort(unencumbered spying on all of its citizens)
would be 'critical.' Is that the type of government you believe the United
States has or should have?

Then after making this strange statement and providing no support for it, the
article actually goes on to refute the claim. If nearly half of the senators
are against it, then it is surely not very 'critical,' is it?

Maybe instead of 'critical,' the author meant to say 'much criticized.'

~~~
higherpurpose
Not to mention that according to Chris Soghoian from ACLU, last year only 5
out of 180 FISA orders were authorized by 215 - the rest were authorized by
_other programs_.

So this "critical" program represents only like ~3% of the government's
surveillance programs. After all we only are talking about "phone records"
here. Most records would likely come from Internet communications these days
and there are likely programs that include capturing the _content_ as well.

Also:

 _" McConnell announced that the Senate would return from its break on Sunday,
May 31, just a few hours before the midnight deadline. McConnell called it
"one more opportunity to act responsibly."_

[http://www.dailydot.com/politics/senate-usa-freedom-act-
fail...](http://www.dailydot.com/politics/senate-usa-freedom-act-fails-
section-215-patriot-act-expiration/)

So it's not over until the fat lady sings.

~~~
derf_
_> only 5 out of 180 FISA orders were authorized by 215_

If you have a statute that you believe allows you to surveil the entire
population, how many orders does that require? As opposed to ones that require
some standard of suspicion for an individual or group.

I don't mean to imply there aren't other programs or theories of authority,
but that this statistics tells you exactly nothing about the importance of a
particular provision.

------
jeremyt
This is in large part thanks to Rand Paul.

It's the only thing on his homepage.

[http://randpaul.com/](http://randpaul.com/)

~~~
webXL
Too bad the electorate (whose opinions are primarily shaped by the government-
friendly/hysteria-driven mass media) will dismiss him as an anti-american
fringe kook, even though that label couldn't be further from the truth.
Freedom implies we must tolerate some of his views and actually help him enact
some of his policies.

~~~
asadotzler
Tolerating some of his views, yes. Electing him President of the United States
of America, not a fucking chance.

~~~
webXL
I'll take this comment and my comment score (which I admit is probably due to
lack of eloquence) as evidence to support my claim.

People really like their freedoms. Others', not so much.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I'm a staunch social democrat, and I could not sing Rand Paul's praises enough
right now. I wholeheartedly appreciate him standing up for our rights.

I don't agree with the vast majority of his platform, but on this issue we
violently agree.

------
everettForth
All the Democrat Senators voted in favor. Why do the Democrats want NSA bulk
spying?[http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/114/senate/1/194](http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/114/senate/1/194)

~~~
amalcon
Because that was the Democrat approach (USA FREEDOM Act) to doing this. Most
of the Democrats naturally voted against the Republican approach:

[http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/114/senate/1/195](http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/114/senate/1/195)

It's less about policy than politics, as you'd probably expect.

~~~
efuquen
That was simply a vote to extend the current program by two months:

"That was immediately followed by rejection of a two-month extension to the
existing programs. The vote was 45-54, again short of the 60-vote threshold."

I think it's pretty clear the policy was they don't want an extension of the
Patriot Act, which I think is a good thing. I also think there is a lot of
confusion here, everything I've read about the USA Freedom Act seems pretty
sensible and addresses privacy concerns. It completely changes how the NSA
could gain access to phone records and bears no resemblance to the blanket
powers the Patriot Act allowed.

------
efuquen
I think the headline here is misleading and focuses on the wrong vote. There
were two votes here 1) to extend the Patriot Act by two months and 2) to pass
the USA Freedom Act (which would supersede the Patriot Act).

The extension vote was opposed by Democrats and supported by most Republicans
while the USA Freedom Act was supported by all democrats and opposed by most
Republicans. While it is indeed good that the Patriot Act wasn't extended this
is the consolation prize of the actual worse news that the USA Freedom Act
didn't pass.

While the USA Freedom Act isn't perfect, and was weakened in the House [1], it
is still far far better than the Patriot Act has meaningful reforms. It also
still has the support of the EFF [1]. Overall, it's failure to pass is bad
news and could lead to an even worse bill.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Freedom_Act#Reaction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Freedom_Act#Reaction)

~~~
tsotha
But this isn't a binary choice between the USA Freedom Act and the Patriot
Act. From what I can see the best thing to do would be to let the Patriot Act
expire and replace it with _nothing_. The government is very short on evidence
the powers in that law have resulted in thwarted terrorist attacks.

It's not like sans Patriot FBI agents will sit around making paper airplanes.

------
late2part
They block it until they stop blocking it. Often these things are media
feeding highlights, with the dirty approvals done quietly at the 11th hour,
when the press won't report.

I hope fervently it DOES get stopped, but watch this play out.

~~~
jMyles
You're right that this will probably happen, however now it will be very, very
difficult to do it without an amendment process which forces Senators to go on
record vis a vis some very specific proposals.

~~~
sounds
Phone surveillance doesn't have to be un-blocked in this bill. It can be
quietly un-blocked as a rider/addendum to some "must-pass" bill right before a
long break -- _de rigueur_ for the Senate.

------
randomname2
Eh... a federal appeals court ruled the Patriot Act illegal:

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/appeals-court-rules-nsa-phone-
pr...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/appeals-court-rules-nsa-phone-program-not-
authorized-by-patriot-act-1431005482)

Why is Congress even considering extending an illegal program?

~~~
schoen
That court decided that some of the surveillance that the government has been
doing wasn't actually authorized by the Patriot Act. It didn't decide that no
law could ever authorize that kind of surveillance.

One challenge is that there is a great deal of other secret surveillance
(beyond the collection of everyone's telephone calling records) that the
government has also been doing under the Patriot Act. We still don't know what
those programs are, but they may involve the collection of other complete
databases about people's activity. Some of the efforts to extend this section
of the Patriot Act might actually be inspired by those secret programs,
without the proponents saying so (because the proponents don't want to talk
about programs that haven't been disclosed).

Congress has a lot of choices about how to respond to the court decision,
particularly because it wasn't on constitutional grounds. In this case both
the court decision and the expiry of section 215 mean that Congress could
protect privacy against secret surveillance, including programs we don't even
know about yet, quite a bit by simply doing nothing.

------
ck2
Yay for the do nothing congress. Finally turns out useful.

~~~
tsotha
If the option is do nothing or do things I don't like, I'll take the former.

------
sschueller
Instead they pass fast-track. [1]

1- [http://rt.com/usa/261321-senate-trade-deal-authority-
passes/](http://rt.com/usa/261321-senate-trade-deal-authority-passes/)

~~~
ck2
RT is a Russian propaganda company and should never be quoted or used for a
source.

added: to be fair, I fell for quoting/linking RT too when I first started
seeing their articles - until I researched it a little

~~~
alfiedotwtf
Yet nobody has any issues with the New York Times, even though they are the
US' propaganda machine?

~~~
chc
The New York Times is often far too deferent to the U.S. Government and a lot
of people do knock them for it, but the difference between that and a state-
run propaganda office like RT is pretty significant. See, for example, this:
[http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/07/18/malaysia...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/07/18/malaysia-
airlines-russian-reporter-quits/12847251/) where a RT reporter resigned on the
spot because she was being forced to report facts that everyone knew were
blatantly false. It sucks in both cases, but this is a whole different level
of suck.

~~~
CamperBob2
(Shrug) If you work for Fox News, you, too, are under orders to report things
that are blatantly false. (Disagree? Then you need to explain why they felt it
necessary to argue in court that they have the right to lie to their viewers
and call it "News.")

~~~
comex
Indeed, one should avoid quoting Fox News or using it as a source, too.
(Although that name is an umbrella for a large number of 'products' \- I would
trust something written on foxnews.com more than whatever Hannity said in his
daily primetime show.)

