The US House of Representatives has moved the US closer to ending the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) bulk collection of US citizens’ telephone records, the most significant demonstration to date of whistle-blower Edward Snowden’s impact on the nation’s debate over privacy and security.
However, the final version of the legislation, “watered down” in the words of one supporter, also showed the limits of that impact.
The bill was severely weakened to mollify US intelligence agencies, which insisted that the surveillance programs that shocked many US citizens are a critical bulwark against terror plots.
The bill was approved 303-121, which means that most House members can now say they voted to end what many critics consider the most troubling practice that Snowden disclosed — the collection and storage of US calling data by the secretive intelligence agency. However, almost no other major provision designed to restrict NSA surveillance, including limits on the secret court that grants warrants to search the data, survived the negotiations to get the bill to the House floor.
Even the prohibition on bulk collection of US citizens’ communications records has been called into question by some activists who say a last-minute change in wording diminished what was sold as a ban.
“People will say: ‘We did something, and isn’t something enough?’” said Steven Aftergood, who tracks intelligence issues for the Federation of American Scientists. “But this bill doesn’t fundamentally resolve the uncertainties that generated the whole controversy.”
Though some privacy activists continued to back the bill, others withdrew support, as did technology companies, such as Google and Facebook.
US Representative Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said: “I believe this is a workable compromise that protects the core function of a counterterrorism program we know has saved lives around the world.”
The measure now heads to the US Senate, where Democratic US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told reporters on Thursday that “we must do something.”
Called the “USA FREEDOM Act,” the bill would codify a proposal made in January by US President Barack Obama, who said he wanted to end the NSA’s practice of collecting and storing the “to and from” records of nearly every US landline telephone call under a program that searched the data for connections to terrorist plots abroad.
The telephone records program was revealed though the leaks last year by Snowden, who allegedly used his job as a computer network administrator to remove an unknown number of reportedly secret documents from an NSA facility in Hawaii. Snowden fled first to China, then Russia, where he is avoiding an extradition order to face criminal charges related to the alleged revelation of classified information.
The telephone companies create and store those billing records and the legislation still would give the NSA authority to request batches of data from the companies to search in terrorism investigations in response to a judicial order. Law enforcement agents routinely obtain such records in criminal investigations.
The USA FREEDOM Act started its life as the idea of those who wanted to clamp down on NSA surveillance, but it was “watered down,” as US Representative Jan Schakowsky acknowledged, shedding a series of provisions favored by civil liberties activists.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
Two former Chilean ministers are among four candidates competing this weekend for the presidential nomination of the left ahead of November elections dominated by rising levels of violent crime. More than 15 million voters are eligible to choose today between former minister of labor Jeannette Jara, former minister of the interior Carolina Toha and two members of parliament, Gonzalo Winter and Jaime Mulet, to represent the left against a resurgent right. The primary is open to members of the parties within Chilean President Gabriel Boric’s ruling left-wing coalition and other voters who are not affiliated with specific parties. A recent poll by the
TENSIONS HIGH: For more than half a year, students have organized protests around the country, while the Serbian presaident said they are part of a foreign plot About 140,000 protesters rallied in Belgrade, the largest turnout over the past few months, as student-led demonstrations mount pressure on the populist government to call early elections. The rally was one of the largest in more than half a year student-led actions, which began in November last year after the roof of a train station collapsed in the northern city of Novi Sad, killing 16 people — a tragedy widely blamed on entrenched corruption. On Saturday, a sea of protesters filled Belgrade’s largest square and poured into several surrounding streets. The independent protest monitor Archive of Public Gatherings estimated the
Irish-language rap group Kneecap on Saturday gave an impassioned performance for tens of thousands of fans at the Glastonbury Festival despite criticism by British politicians and a terror charge for one of the trio. Liam Og O hAnnaidh, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, has been charged under the UK’s Terrorism Act with supporting a proscribed organization for allegedly waving a Hezbollah flag at a concert in London in November last year. The rapper, who was charged under the anglicized version of his name, Liam O’Hanna, is on unconditional bail before a further court hearing in August. “Glastonbury,
RSS