

USA Freedom Act fails as senators reject bill to scrap NSA bulk collection - jdp23
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/23/usa-freedom-act-fails-as-senators-reject-bill-to-scrap-nsa-bulk-collection

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jdp23
There's a video of the whole session at
[http://www.c-span.org/video/?326202-3/us-senate-votes-nsa-
su...](http://www.c-span.org/video/?326202-3/us-senate-votes-nsa-surveillance)

It gets really dramatic at around 1:04, after McConnell's 2-month reauth was
blocked as well (46-52). Shorter-term reauths needed unanimous consent.
McConnell proposed a 1-week extension and Rand Paul objected, requesting to
have a guarantee to have 2 amendments voted on. McConnell proposed a four-day,
three-day, two-day, and one-day extensions; Rand Paul objects to all. Then
after a few minutes McConnell came back to say "well, we have one more chance
to act responsibly, see you on the 31st."

EDIT: Buzzfeed has the confrontation on video at
[http://www.buzzfeed.com/katherinemiller/in-a-box-with-a-
fox](http://www.buzzfeed.com/katherinemiller/in-a-box-with-a-fox)

~~~
iaw
Thank you for that. I'm quite pleased to watch our democracy finally playing
this out properly.

------
orthecreedence
This is a good sign. And to be clear, USA Freedom is just another
reauthorization of NSA spying. There were motions to extend the Patriot Act by
just a few days (even one more day), all objected to by Rand Paul/Ron Wyden.

So the next vote is Sunday the 31st. Hopefully the windbags (who truly believe
the US is under constant attack and the only way to save us from these
horrible terrorists is to passively treat every citizen as a terrorist) will
lose this battle.

The US did just fine before the Patriot Act. It will do just fine, once again,
without it.

------
danenania
My guess is that losing the "patriot" act would actually improve the
capabilities of US counterterrorism because they'll be forced to get their
shit together and do some real intelligence work rather than wasting huge
amounts of time and resources on this panopticon fantasy that they clearly
have no idea how to utilize effectively. Constraints provide focus.

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drawkbox
As of now the Patriot Act expires on June 1st then.

 _As he put it, there are those who want a “straight extension, those who like
USA Freedom and those who like nothing”._

 _Those want a straight extension of the Patriot Act are in a distinct
minority and supporters of the USA Freedom Act still cannot muster the
necessary super majority to advance the bill. The result means those who are
more than happy to simply let Section 215 expire on May 31 are in the driver’s
seat._

Count me in on the group that wants to see it expire. It is also just terrible
to see the words 'patriot', 'USA', 'Freedom' in this mess.

~~~
jdp23
The Senate's meeting again on the 31st. Rand Paul plans to offer some
amendments; Burr may well have one as well. So it may be a revised USA Freedom
Act; or it may be a sunset.

------
swalsh
Watch as Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski gets up, and defends the program... then
take a look at her top contributors.

[http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=n0000...](http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=n00001945)

~~~
csandreasen
I'm sorry, which one of those contributors has a vested interest in extension
of Section 215?

~~~
rmxt
Both Harris [1] and Mantech [2] offer products that include "intel analysis".
Section 215 seems like a great avenue to perpetually harvest data and keep
these products a necessity. Yes, [1] looks like any other analytics dashboard,
but what else would you expect for NLP and voice recognition on a massive
scale?

[1]
[http://govcomm.harris.com/solutions/InformationManagement/Da...](http://govcomm.harris.com/solutions/InformationManagement/DataAnalytics.aspx#innovations)

[2]
[http://www.mantech.com/solutions/Intelligence%20and%20Counte...](http://www.mantech.com/solutions/Intelligence%20and%20Counter-
Intelligence/Pages/default.aspx)

------
sillygoose
The Land of The Free needs a "Freedom Act" to add some freedom?

Even if it's passed, do you think NSA will stop snooping on everyone?

If not, what's the point of enacting the legislation? Are politicians just
retarded, or do they think the law serves a purpose even without an effect on
what NSA is doing? Wha t might that purpose be? Could it be related to
perception management?

~~~
pluma
The names of US senate bills sometimes seem straight out of 1984. Freedom Act.
Patriot Act. It's amazing they can keep a straight face while saying those
names.

~~~
sillygoose
True. But it's even more amazing how the masses just keep swallowing that
shit. Of course, it's understandable too, considering people have been trained
to be obedient cattle.

