Bipartisan resistance to reining in the surveillance state – OCRegister

Have you been on the Internet lately? Where did you go? What did you do there?

If you think the answers to these questions are nobodys business, be grateful that the House of Representatives didnt pass a new reauthorization of the governments power to conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans.

March 15 was the expiration date for three Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authorities: the foreign surveillance authorities known as Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, the lone wolf authority and the authority for a roving wiretap. During that same month, the House passed a reauthorization bill, and the Senate made a few changes and sent it back to the House.

While the reauthorization of surveillance authorities has often stirred debate, in the end, something was always worked out to keep the authorizations in force.

This time it was different. Privacy advocates, including the American Booksellers for Free Expression, formed a coalition to call for the adoption of a privacy amendment. It would have aligned the law with court rulings to make clear that internet browsing and search history was not to be collected under Section 215, which allows the government to peruse records without meeting a probable cause standard.

The amendment introduced by Senators Steve Daines, R-Montana, and Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, was replaced by a negotiated amendment that was weaker, and Sen. Wyden announced his opposition.

Opposition also came from President Trump, who threatened to veto the bill. Warrantless surveillance of Americans is wrong! he tweeted, later adding, Our country has just suffered through the greatest political crime in its history. The massive abuse of FISA was a big part of it!

Support from House Republicans who had voted for reauthorization in March fell away, and they were joined by some Democrats. Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wisconsin, said, the people of this country are over-policed and over-surveilled.

On the opposite side, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, said the privacy amendment to restrict the collection of internet browser searches was too great a risk to national security. Acknowledging that FISA authorities had been abused, Cheney said the House should still not pass a bill which would fundamentally weaken our ability to keep the nation safe.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi couldnt pull the votes together, and she pulled the bill off the floor.

The House has now referred the FISA reauthorization bill to a conference committee, where House majority Democrats will negotiate with Senate majority Republicans on a compromise version of the legislation.

Warrantless, secret surveillance of the phone and Internet records of Americans has always been unsettling, more so now that we have had multiple reports from the Justice Department inspector general documenting that the FBI and DOJ presented the secret FISA court with seriously flawed applications in order to obtain warrants for spying. Following an investigation that found 17 inaccuracies, omissions and significant errors in four applications for surveillance of Trump campaign associate Carter Page, IG Michael Horowitz looked at warrant applications in 29 other cases and found an average of 20 errors in each.

Before Americans again trust the government with the power to override Fourth Amendment protections in the name of national security, the failings that allowed these abuses to happen must be corrected.

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Bipartisan resistance to reining in the surveillance state - OCRegister

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