Senators Wyden, Udall and Heinrich have editorialized against NSA bulk collection of communications, which criticism they limit to metadata, stated that it serves no purpose, and indicated that the agency is in urgent need of major reform. They warn that we are being offered a dangerous placebo reform.
Please contact Dianne Feinstein, Jay Rockefeller, Barbara Mikulski, John Warner, Angus King, Saxby Chambliss, Richard Burr, James Risch, Dan Coats, Marco Rubio, and Susan Collins to ask why they want to legalize mass surveillance.
This is to amplify on the editorial mentioned by Georgia Logothetis in Abbreviated Pundit Roundup. Three Senators, Mark Udall (D-CO), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Martin Heinrich (D-NM) have warned that the NSA is out of control. Some excerpts:
The bulk collection of Americans' telephone records — so-called metadata — by the National Security Agency is, in our view, a clear case of a general warrant that violates the spirit of the framers' intentions.
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The usefulness of the bulk collection program has been greatly exaggerated. We have yet to see any proof that it provides real, unique value in protecting national security.
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Despite this, the surveillance reform bill recently ratified by the Senate Intelligence Committee would explicitly permit the government to engage in dragnet collection as long as there were rules about when officials could look at these phone records. It would also give intelligence agencies wide latitude to conduct warrantless searches for Americans' phone calls and emails.
This is not the true reform that poll after poll has shown the American people want.
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We had already proposed our own, bipartisan surveillance reform legislation, the Intelligence Oversight and Surveillance Reform Act, which ... would prohibit the government from conducting warrantless "backdoor searches" of Americans' communications...,It would also create a "constitutional advocate" to present an opposing view when the F.I.S.C. is considering major questions of law or constitutional interpretation.
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Congress needs to ... preserve the right of citizens to be free from unwarranted interference in their lives, which the framers understood was vital to American liberties.
Constituents of
Dianne Feinstein should contact her and ask her why
she is pushing to legalize massive, pervasive spying, and make it possible for someone with less benign intentions than Obama to target political enemies. Also contact Jay Rockefeller, Barbara Mikulski, John Warner, Angus King, Saxby Chambliss, Richard Burr, James Risch, Dan Coats, Marco Rubio, and Susan Collins,
who voted to approve.
Please oppose the FISA Improvement Act of 2013, S. 1631. Support the Intelligence Oversight and Surveillance Reform Act, S. 1551, described here.