

House forces vote on amendment that would limit NSA bulk surveillance - uptown
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/23/house-amendment-nsa-bulk-surveillance

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pvnick
This is the best chance we've yet had. We have _actual support_ from congress!
Please, even if you do nothing else for this cause, call your congressman and
urge him/her to support this (the Amash Amendment).

Here's a helpful webpage that'll give you your congressman's phone number from
your zip code as well as a script to read:
[http://defundthensa.com/](http://defundthensa.com/)

~~~
mtgx
I agree. It seems very few people are actually calling Congress [1]. If we
could achieve this with only so little, imagine if everyone who feels
"helpless" but doesn't call, would also call. It would help a lot more.

[1] [http://sina.is/call-now-for-privacy/](http://sina.is/call-now-for-
privacy/)

~~~
pvnick
Takes _literally_ 33 seconds to call (just timed it)

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neltnerb
Did a double take at this:

"Alexander's meeting was listed as 'top-secret' and divided into two two-hour
sessions, the first for Republicans and the second for Democrats."

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sologoub
They should compare the transcripts...

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neltnerb
I have the suspicion that transcripts are distinctly forbidden =P

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baconner
The White House statement on the amendment is really something to behold.

"... We look forward to continuing to discuss these critical issues with the
American people and the Congress.

However, we oppose the current effort in the House to hastily dismantle one of
our Intelligence Community’s counterterrorism tools. This blunt approach is
not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process. ..."

Not the product of an informed process - and whose fault is that?

More... [http://pastebin.com/RF5U59N0](http://pastebin.com/RF5U59N0)

~~~
d23
I'm crossing my fingers on this one. I have hoped from the get-go that Obama
was trying to do some political jiu-jitsu to get the House to fight against
him on the NSA thing by pretending to support it. People attack him for
talking all loftily about most topics and then not getting anything done, so I
found it strange that he basically didn't even pretend that the NSA scandal
was bad. Keep in mind he didn't start the program; maybe he never really
supported it. Everything he's tried to do has resulted in congress opposing
him, so trying to change his tactics seems like the logical thing to do.

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tenpoundhammer
While this is a nice gesture and I certainly support it, it's hard to believe
it would have significant impact. It's clear the NSA is willing to lie to both
the public and congress and bend whatever rules they have to. So this will
probably just force them through a new loop hole to get where they are today.

When you have your own private supreme court(FISA Courts) to rubber stump
rules for you, it's pretty easy to find and/or create loop holes.

On the plus side, if it gets stopped at least we will know who to throw out of
office.

~~~
grabhive
The NSA continues to be viewed as a shadowy government agency, limited in its
capabilities by federal law. But what do we really know about that? Besides
trivial inconvenience, is there any real disadvantage to taking the most
paranoid and defensive stance against it?

I continue bringing this up whenever a submission like this appears, because I
am very much afraid that the technical community will accept a congressional
victory as "okay, let's continue business as usual", when we need to be
reinventing everything that has made mass-wiretapping possible in the first
place.

~~~
krapp
_when we need to be reinventing everything that has made mass-wiretapping
possible in the first place._

Are you suggesting we somehow roll back the last sixty-odd years of
telecommunications and information technology? What do you suggest we replace
it with?

~~~
grabhive
It probably isn't necessary to replace the hardware infrastructure if privacy
and security again become fashionable in software development. A great deal of
important peer-to-peer, encryption and general data-obfuscation research has
been done already. The trouble is, as Schneier so eloquently put it, that
spying is the business model of the Internet.

But we can take another approach.

If this REALLY matters, we should be directing our attention not to some
nebulous and almost certainly unenforceable government action, but rather to
the eye of the storm: the very things we are building.

This is good mind-fodder if you have a moment to spare:
[http://zeroknowledgeprivacy.org/](http://zeroknowledgeprivacy.org/)

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bendoernberg
This is a HUGE turning point. PLEASE call your member of Congress using this
easy calling tool: [http://defundthensa.com/](http://defundthensa.com/).

~~~
reneherse
Just used this site to call my representative. It was super easy, and the
person who took my message was very polite.

Let's put some momentum on this thing!

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zukhan
"In case you ever thought writing, calling, or emailing your representatives
was a waste of time, take it from Steve Hildebrand, Barack Obama's openly gay
deputy national campaign director: "I don't think our voices are as powerful
as they should be. I think too many people in the gay community do not push
their elected officials as hard as they should. If you had 20 gay people
together in a room and asked how many of them actually have reached out and
either called, e-mailed or sent a letter to their member of Congress over the
last two months, I would say the vast, vast majority of them will have done
nothing. My suggestion is that people need to become strong activists, that we
need to multiply by hundreds the number of activists we have in the gay
community. We need more voices, we need louder voices, and we need to tell
politicians at every level we're not willing to take their excuses anymore."

And in case you needed reason not to write, call, or email your
representative: You will almost never be able to get her on the line. An
office staffer will answer the phone (or sometimes just a voicemail box), sort
the letters, and go through emails, responding with a form reply, if anything.

What those staffers will hand your legislator, likely, is a tally of how many
notes and calls they received from X number of constituents on Y different
issues. That summation, however, is what's powerful. In a legislator's very
busy day, these briefs are easy to digest and send the most black-and-white
picture of what his voters believe.

So yes, your letters and phone calls matter. In aggregate. JUST LIKE VOTES!"

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amirmc
This seems like a great (and concrete) step forward and folks should call
their congressmen. However, the following gave me pause for thought.

 _"... the NSA itself has indicated its willingness to consider abandoning the
phone-records collection provided the telecommunications companies it partners
with retains the data."_

~~~
pvnick
This actually seems like a reasonable compromise

~~~
walshemj
So you trust the phone company more than the NSA - remind me again what over
sight the phone companies have from the FCC?

The FCC is unable to actually regulate in some areas (ADSL for example)as
states rights trump its ability to be an effective regulator.

~~~
crusso
_So you trust the phone company more than the NSA_

It's not about whom you trust more. It's about the power of the phone company
to string together your phone calls, your cell phone calls, your Internet
access, your library books, and your license plate camera sightings. That
power is nil with the phone company since they don't have all that other data
and they don't have any kind of reason or mandate to make those kinds of
connections. The NSA, on the other hand...

~~~
wpietri
And, further, it creates systemic inertia.

If the NSA has to ask, via court order, for each set of records it wants, I'm
a lot less worried about somebody in government using the data for personal
entertainment, financial gain, or political advantage.

~~~
amirmc
> "And, further, it creates systemic inertia"

This is an assumption (and a dangerous one, imho). From what I've read they've
already optimised the hell out of getting 'court-orders' so I don't see it as
a stretch to imagine that they would do the same with data stored at remote
locations.

There have been stories that said companies would help with NSA access since
the alternative was to have NSA machines on site. Pushing data back to the
companies doesn't mean NSA would walk in and demand to install some of their
own hardware.

~~~
wpietri
No, I think it's more than an assumption. The number of people whose records
have been seized through court order is much smaller than the the wholesale
collection of every phone call record and photos of every piece of paper mail.

We literally have no idea what is done with the bulk-collected data at the
NSA. As Snowden and Manning show, internal controls on supposedly sensitive
data are weak. But we do know that they can't look through the data they
_haven 't_ collected.

The court order, even if it's easy to get, leaves a paper trail thrice over.
One with the executive branch, one with the courts, and one with whatever
company has to cough up data. That won't prevent somebody sufficiently
powerful and confident from getting data. But it will act as a significant
deterrent to casual snooping by insiders, and also to political misuse of the
system.

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logn
Maybe I'm too cynical, but the NSA will just redefine in their minds what all
the terminology means so they can keep doing what they want. If we forbid
"collecting records" they'll consider "collecting" to be taking ownership of
records and allow themselves to query via PRISM on site at Facebook et al. If
that's considered a 'search' violating the 4th amendment, they'll make an AI
robot to do the searching. They'll be constantly one step ahead in making new
technology to avoid being restricted by terminology. People need to go to
prison for what they've already done. Passing a new law to explicitly forbid
their past and current behavior only legitimizes what they've done and will
lead to further acceptance of their actions.

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grabhive
Be careful with your optimism. If the amendment passes, it will be a sign to
many that the days of draconian domestic surveillance are over. The trouble is
that this may or may not be the case; we likely won't be told the truth. And
yet our defenses will be lowered just the same.

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Hilyin
Question, they keep mentioning phone records. What about the mass surveillance
of email, texts, multimedia, and the cooperation of all those big
corporations? Does this include that as well?

~~~
bendoernberg
It doesn't, but it's a concrete first step. If we can win this fight, we
redefine the debate, and the discussion becomes "which part of the NSA's
surveillance will be blocked next?"

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dil8
It is good to see that some politicians still have the balls to speak
truthfully about this issue...

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marcamillion
How is this not getting upvoted more?

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pvnick
It's creeping up the front page. Looks like it got hit early on by the HN
purists who flagged it a bunch, but now that they're out of ammo it's getting
up there.

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runn1ng
_hahaha_

You can't be _serious_. NSA simply won't lose.

~~~
grabhive
All such agencies will lose if we start creating software more responsibly. I
understand that Stallman is a somewhat controversial figure here, but his
mantra of "freedom over convenience" might bear repeating.

