Senate Republicans Block Sweeping Overhaul of N.S.A. Program

[Valin]

NY Times:

CHARLIE SAVAGE and JEREMY W. PETERS

NOV. 18, 2014

 

Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked a sweeping overhaul of the once-secret National Security Agency program that collects records of Americans’ phone calls in bulk.

 

Democrats and a handful of Republicans who supported the measure fell two votes short of the 60 votes they needed to take up the legislation, which sponsors named the U.S.A. Freedom Act.

 

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, worked hard to defeat the bill, which had the support of the Obama administration and a coalition of technology companies, including Apple, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.

 

“This is the worst possible time to be tying our hands behind our backs,” Mr. McConnell said before the vote, expressing the concerns of those who argued that the program was a vital tool in the fight against terrorism.

 

But the vote only put off a fractious debate over security and personal liberties until next year. While a Republican-controlled Senate is less likely to go along with the kinds of changes that were in the bill, which would have ended the N.S.A.'s ability to collect bulk phone call data, the debate could further expose rifts between the party’s interventionist and more libertarian-leaning wings.

 

(Snip)

[Valin]

Rand Paul and Ted Cruz Failed the 2016 National-Security Test Last Night
John Yoo
November 19, 2014

 

Tuesday night, Republicans properly blocked the Obama-supported (and misleadingly titled) USA Freedom Act. The bill would have expanded the requirement for judicial warrants before the intelligence agencies could use metadata (phone-call information, not content) to try to track down suspected terrorists. The law would have hamstrung the ability of the NSA to use our technological advantages in a war against al-Qaeda and associated groups, such as the Islamic State, who threaten to attack the U.S. and our allies (a war that is going very poorly for us right now).

 

Under the Supreme Court case of Maryland v. Smith, metadata (such as phone numbers called, duration of call, etc) is not covered by the Fourth Amendment – only the the content of such calls is. Those who believe civil liberties are under threat, therefore, wanted to restrict our intelligence agencies far more than current practice or Supreme Court cases require. This would be a mistake as the threat to our nation, thanks to the Obama administration’s lack of strategy and political will, has increased, rather than fallen, in the last few years. Look at the rise of the Islamic State — a terrorist group that controls large amounts of territory, resources, and population and wants to do us harm.

 

(Snip)

[Pepper]

Rubio at the forefront, defending the spying.

[Valin]

Rubio at the forefront, defending the spying.

And this is some sort of bad thing?

 

 

 

Ted Cruz votes to hamper U.S. anti-terrorism intelligence gathering

Paul Mirengoff

November 19, 2014

 

The Senate has failed to pass the USA Freedom Act, which would have hobbled our governments efforts to conduct electronic surveillance of terrorists. Good. As Mitch McConnell argued, with ISIS and other blood thirsty terrorist groups on the rise, this is the worst possible time to be tying our hands behind our back.

 

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden have described the USA Freedom Act as reform only ISIS could love. But they are wrong. Ted Cruz loves it too, or at least liked it enough to vote against the filibuster that blocked it. In effect, Cruz voted for the legislation.

 

Mukasey and Hayden explain why a vote for the USA Freedom Act is a vote to hamstring our intelligence services in their efforts to keep America secure:

 

 

For starters, the bill ends the National Security Agencys bulk collection of what is called telephone metadata. This includes the date, time, duration and telephone numbers for all calls, but not their content or the identity of the caller or called, and is information already held by telephone companies.

 

The bill would substitute a cumbersome and untried process that would require the NSA, when it seeks to check on which telephone numbers have called or been called by a number reasonably associated with terrorist activity, to obtain a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISA court, and then scurry to each of the nations telephone-service providers to comb through the information that remains in their hands rather than in the NSAs.

 

Nothing in the bill requires the telephone companies to preserve the metadata for any prescribed period. Current Federal Communications Commission regulations impose an 18-month retention requirement, but administrative regulations are subject to change. It isnt hard to envision companies that wish to offer subscribers the attraction of rapid destruction of these records, or a complaisant bureaucracy that lets them do it.

Perversely, the Act would make it more difficult for law enforcement officials to obtain metadata on terrorist communications than on the communications of garden-variety criminals:

 

(Snip)

[Valin]

From England

 

The technology giants are breathtakingly irresponsible about terrorism
We know they can be good citizens when they want to be. So why are they acting in ways that could endanger us all?
29 November 2014

James Forsyth

 

The arrogance and intransigence of some of the technology companies in the fight against terrorism has become extraordinary. We learned this week that one of Fusilier Lee Rigby’s murderers, Michael Adebowale, had Facebook accounts closed. Apparently, this was because it was feared he was using them for terrorist activities. No one told the authorities. Even now, our security services — which have helped prevent 40 attacks since 2005 — have not been given full details of what Adebowale was doing online.

 

What makes the foot-dragging of tech companies inexcusable is that we know they could do more to help prevent terrorist attacks because of what they are doing to combat child sex exploitation. Mark Field, a member of the Commons Intelligence and Security Committee, says that there’s ‘no doubt that if Adebowale had been preparing a paedophile attack not a terrorist one, the authorities would have been alerted’.

 

If an online account is closed because a communication service provider believes that it is linked to terrorism, this information should routinely be handed to the authorities, as it is in cases of child sexual exploitation. It might be difficult for technological reasons to hand over more detail. But it does seem odd that an industry defined by its refusal to accept things are impossible is so willing to cite technical impossibility on this matter. An algorithm that could detect potential terrorist activity is an even worthier candidate for one of Google’s ‘moon shots’ than the driverless car.

 

(Snip)

 

(Podcast At Link: James Forsyth and Hugo Rifkind debate the clash between geeks and spooks)

 

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