Even Better, yesterday was just a dog and pony show.
The 2009 dissent, led by a senior NSA official and embraced by others at the agency, prompted the Obama administration to consider, but ultimately abandon, a plan to stop gathering the records.
The secret internal debate has not been previously reported. The Senate on Tuesday rejected an administration proposal that would have curbed the program and left the records in the hands of telephone companies rather than the government. That would be an arrangement similar to the one the administration quietly rejected in 2009.
> Since I came to the Senate, I've been working to fix this. I've supported amendments to the Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that would have required greater public reporting on the use of surveillance authorities and greater disclosures about the legal opinions and safeguards that support them. When those amendments failed, I voted against renewing both of these laws.
From the article you posted, you left out a few relevant quotes.
> In an early 2006 AlterNet interview before he was officially running for Senate, Franken disparaged the Bush administration's NSA warrantless-surveillance program
> At a September 2009 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the reauthorization of expiring components of the USA Patriot Act, Franken read the Fourth Amendment to the assistant attorney general for national security as a means of questioning the act's "roving wiretap" provision. Franken would also eventually vote against a 2012 reauthorization of the FISA amendments that give the government wide surveillance authority.
> Before voting against reauthorizing the FISA amendments last year, Sen. Franken also cosponsored and voted for three amendments that his office says would have "improved the bill on transparency and privacy."
