
Stop the NSA "Fake Fix" Bill - joshfraser
https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=9437
======
MBlume
As a Californian I am never not ashamed to have Senator Feinstein representing
me. Is there a "tech lobby"? If there is, why is its number one priority not
fielding a decent primary challenger to oust this authoritarian disgrace to
our state?

~~~
DrewRWx
She has seniority in the Senate and it's a "devil you know" situation. Mostly
we don't want to Tea Party ourselves by trying to purify our ranks.

~~~
betterunix
That is the kind of cowardice that gets you people like Feinstein. Grow a pair
and stop voting for her until she gets her act together.

~~~
ceejayoz
Perhaps, but Tea Partying one's primaries gets you people like Akin.

------
kunai
Feinstein.

How is she still in office? She's the spitting image of Dolores Umbridge; an
authoritarian freak who has nothing better to do than make the lives of honest
individuals completely arduous.

~~~
betterunix
People vote for the lesser of two evils. At some point people stopped
understanding that "the lesser of two evils" is still _evil_.

------
eridius
Crap. Senator Feinstein is my senator. I'm pretty sure sending her a letter
isn't going to help.

~~~
hobs
Do it anyway. Each person who raises their voice may be a little mouse, but a
million mice working together can topple anything.

~~~
dmix
Sending Feinstein a bunch of _letters_ is going to help reign in NSA power?
Good luck with that.

She's a big part of _why_ the NSA is as powerful as it is, because people like
her are given total power to watch over the watchers (the secret panels of
judges) who watch over the watchers, etc. Each level seems as apathetic to
reigning in the NSA's power than the next (including the president).

This is a big systemic issue, the political response both by the public and
politicians has been embarrassingly impotent, considering the scale of the
mass surveillance.

Forgive my apathy, but this isn't like SOPA where internet campaigns are going
to fix things. The power is already deeply rooted in place and the players
involved are not giving it back easily.

If you're going to try to counter it via politics, why waste your time sending
letters to politicians who are totally complicit in the problem?

~~~
aluhut
> She's a big part of why the NSA is as powerful as it is,

At this point, isn't it unsafe to write letters to such people?

You may end up on one of the "lists".

~~~
b6
I welcome being put on a list, if it happens. I want to be part of this
conflict. Something is happening now, and we need to keep pushing.

------
001sky
_Senator Feinstein is touting this proposal as a way to address the problems
with uncontrolled NSA spying, but don’t be fooled: it’s a fake fix._

Urgh. Person with something to lose, protecting her power and influence?

------
ddoolin
Searching for the legislation?

[https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s1631](https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s1631)

------
nyarlathotep
I don't doubt the EFF, but I am automatically skeptical of anyone who tries to
get me to take action without bothering to post the bill or even relevant
excerpts.

------
csandreasen
After reading the amendment, my take on it is that the EFF article is stating
that the whole program needs to be scrapped and criticizing Feinstein for not
doing so. Feinstein is apparently of the opinion that the program could be
useful and her tactic is instead to put additional oversight in place. Here is
what this bill _does_ specify:

\- Codifies that no message content may be collected under this authority

\- Specifies that any queries against this data must have documentation
showing "reasonable articulable suspicion that the selector is associated with
international terrorism or activities in preparation thereof" (note that
military/political/counter-espionage/etc. is not listed)

\- A person meeting the above criteria who travels into the US may continue to
be targeted for up to 72 hours. The Attorney General may grant an extension as
an "emergency authorization".

\- A record is to be made for each search against the database of the phone
number searched for, the person who searched for it, date and time it occurred
and documentation as to why the search was performed.

\- The documentation for each search must be given to the FISC. The FISC is
explicitly granted the ability to terminate any collection if it finds that
the search was unlawful.

\- Directs the FISC to appoint additional personnel with access to classified
information and expertise in "privacy and civil liberties, intelligence
collection, telecommunications, or any other area that may lend legal or
technical expertise to the court." An annual report must be submitted to
Congress on the number of personnel appointed.

\- Any individual who circumvents access to the phone records database will be
fined or imprisoned for up to 10 years.

\- A semiannual report needs to be made to the House and Senate Intelligence
Subcommittees with information on all electronic surveillance, physical
searches and use of pen registers/trap and trace devices conducted under this
act. The report needs to include the total number of requests made to the
court, how many were approved/denied/modified, the names of any targets within
the United States, compliance incidents, any emergency authorizations, etc.
That information, along with any of the documentation mentioned above must be
made available on request to the NSA Inspector General, the Intelligence
Community Inspector General, DoJ and the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight
Board

\- An unclassified summary of all of the above information needs to be made
available to each member of Congress.

~~~
betterunix
"Feinstein is apparently of the opinion that the program could be useful and
her tactic is instead to put additional oversight in place."

In other words, _oversight has failed, let 's use oversight to fix it_. The
only real reform in that list is this:

"Any individual who circumvents access to the phone records database will be
fined or imprisoned for up to 10 years"

Of course, without periodic _public_ review of the NSA, we will never know if
people are being punished for that sort of thing. At this point we have _no
reason whatsoever_ to trust any secret oversight or secret courts. We got into
this mess because everything the NSA does is done in secret, and because the
FISC operates in secret, and because when someone breaks the rules it is
reported to people who are sworn to secrecy.

Of course, public review is conspicuously absent from that list. Only
privileged members of Congress, long out of touch with the public, will be
reviewing this -- it's business as usual.

~~~
csandreasen
It's worth noting that a month ago the EFF was calling for people with
technical and civil liberties expertise to help provide more oversight [1].

The NSA exists solely for the purpose of gathering foreign intelligence - it's
a spy agency. As a result, you'll never be able to get completely transparent
public review of their activities without making them effectively useless. I
see a few options on the table:

A) Go with the status quo, not change anything just trust the NSA to do its
business under the existing oversight.

B) Strengthen the oversight to further ensure that the NSA is only conducting
the work it's authorized to do against the targets it's authorized to spy on.

C) Assert that espionage just isn't worth it and just take the tools away from
the NSA.

There are plenty of things that you can do under option B to address problems.
Some of them are in this bill, and some of them can be made available to the
public. Members of Congress have conflicting views on how much information
they've been given by the NSA [2], which to me implies that some take their
positions on the intelligence committees more seriously than others. If you
look at the actual video of the hearing, Congressman Mike Rogers suggests that
serving on the intelligence committee is a much bigger responsibility than
serving on the other committees and they can't bring their staffers to assist
[3]. If Congress isn't capable of providing the oversight they tasked
themselves to do with the resources they have, then they need to either gather
the resources they need or appoint another group to conduct oversight in a
manner that can effectively ensure to the public that the NSA is gathering
valid foreign intelligence and nothing else.

[1] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/47-prominent-
technolog...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/47-prominent-
technologists-nsa-review-panel-we-need-better-technical-oversight)

[2] [http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/29/us-usa-security-
ns...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/29/us-usa-security-nsa-
idUSBRE99S03N20131029)

[3] [http://www.c-span.org/Events/Intel-Officials-Discuss-
Propose...](http://www.c-span.org/Events/Intel-Officials-Discuss-Proposed-
Changes-to-NSA-Spying-Programs/10737442346-1/) (jump to about 01:34:00)

------
zmanian
There don't seem to be any obvious points leverage with which to apply
pressure on Diane Feinstein. Her age, wealth and long term membership in
Senate make her much less vulnerable to standard political tactics.

It seems that we need to manipulate the situation so that Diane Feinstein
feels that is in her interests to support a more robust set of NSA reforms. I
don't feel like I have a complete understand how Senator Feinstein perceives
her interests.

------
nroose
I saw a great bumper sticker today: "One nation under surveillance."

------
codex
It's important to realize that the EFF is not a _research_ institution--it is
an _advocacy_ institution. In other words, the EFF doesn't start off with an
unbiased view of an issue and then decide what is in the public interest.
Instead, it takes predictable positions on a number of issues, and those
positions will _never_ change no matter what the facts may turn out to be.
After all, it was founded to push an agenda which was pre-defined in advance
of its founding 25 years ago.

Therefore, you should never read EFF materials with blind credulity as many of
the commentators on this post do. They put out propaganda like all advocacy
groups do, and it's up to neutral third parties to filter it. To be fair,
they're not as bad as other groups (NRA, anyone?) but if you read their output
directly, it's up to _you_ to pick out the disingenuous parts, if you can find
them, and/or also read opposing views to get the full view. Otherwise, it's
like a jury deciding a trial in which only one side presents their case.
That's a shame, because I often agree with the EFF, yet I have to do a lot of
work to unbend their reality distortion field.

~~~
warmblood
Specifically what do you take umbrage with in the case of this bill and the
EFF's position?

I'm asking as someone who agrees with your overall point but is mystified
about what made you post it here under this article specifically.

------
D9u
It is plain to see that our government servants are serving interests which
are against "We the People."

------
samstave
Feinstein is a terrorist.

(Haha iOS attempts to autocorrect Feinstein to festering, perfect)

------
sown
My first reaction was to call up my representatives ... but I wonder if doing
so would put me on some kind of 'special' list.

~~~
zachrose
Don't be a coward.

------
AsymetricCom
Good job EFF, when the bill gets inevitably defeated, you can claim a personal
victory and solicit for more donations! Put it up with all your other
accomplishments on your website you invested so much time and money into
achieving.

~~~
jlgreco
So what do you suggest the EFF do here, _not_ oppose the bill?

~~~
AsymetricCom
I suggest they actually do something other than asking the public to publish
empty rhetoric via an auto-form.

At least they did that one thing a while ago and helped sue the RIAA like 10
years ago when someone already started the case. That was a real big PR win
for EFF. They can use all those donations to actually fluff their couch and
sip iced tea now and publish more damnations from the comfort of their non-
profit internet connection.

All the EFF does is take in donations and claim any legal victory as their
own, you know because they wrote a letter on their website saying how nasty
the defendant is. Thanks EFF! They also help spin pro big-media legislation as
victories for information freedom. While people fight against pointless
strawmen DRM issues that the industry knows will ultimately fail, the real
line is being fortified legally in bills like the Trans-Pacific Partnership
(Pact has negative conotations) and being enforced at the network level with
internet-breaking packet-inspection devices.

~~~
tsaoutourpants
Are you kidding me? The EFF, along with EPIC, are the two organizations that
actually help with modern 4th amendment issues. I don't know where your hate
for the EFF comes from, but it's certainly not based on a reasoned analysis of
their work over the last decade.

~~~
AsymetricCom
They havn't done anything in the last decade.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Electronic_Frontier...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Electronic_Frontier_Foundation_actions#2005-present)

Pick one thing in that list that is "ground breaking" where the EFF actually
invested their own resources into helping accomplish. Did you even know that
the President of EFF owns a record company?

~~~
adamnemecek
Gasp, not a record company!!1!

