Lawmakers Threaten Legal Basis of NSA Surveillance 206
Nerval's Lobster writes "The author of the Patriot Act has warned that the legal justification for the NSA's wholesale domestic surveillance program will disappear next summer if the White House doesn't restrict the way the NSA uses its power. Section 215 of the Patriot Act will expire during the summer of 2015 and will not be renewed unless the White House changes the shocking scale of the surveillance programs for which the National Security Administration uses the authorization, according to James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), an original author of the Patriot Act and its two reauthorizations, stated Washington insider-news source The Hill. 'Unless Section 215 gets fixed, you, Mr. Cole, and the intelligence community will get absolutely nothing, because I am confident there are not the votes in this Congress to reauthorize it,' Sensenbrenner warned Deputy Attorney General James Cole during the Feb. 4 hearing. Provisions of Section 215, which allows the NSA to collect metadata about phone calls made within the U.S., give the government a 'very useful tool' to track connections among Americans that might be relevant to counterterrorism investigations, Cole told the House Judiciary Committee. The scale of the surveillance and lengths to which the NSA has pushed its limits was a "shock" according to Sensenbrenner, who also wrote the USA Freedom Act, a bill to restrict the scope of both Section 215 and the NSA programs, which has attracted 130 co-sponsors. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has sponsored a similar bill in the Senate."
Re:So what if Congress doesn't reauthorize it? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Empty threat (Score:5, Informative)
>James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.)
A laughably empty threat. The Republican bloc is unlikely to do anything that would curb military or intelligence related activities.
The two prior extensions were pushed through by Democrats [wikipedia.org]. After 8 years, its time to stop blaming Republicans.
On Saturday, February 27, 2010, President Barack Obama signed into law legislation that would temporarily extend for one year three controversial provisions of the Patriot Act that had been set to expire:
Authorize court-approved roving wiretaps that permit surveillance on multiple phones.
Allow court-approved seizure of records and property in anti-terrorism operations.
Permit surveillance against a so-called lone wolf, a non-U.S. citizen engaged in terrorism who may not be part of a recognized terrorist group.
Its useful divisive idiots like you that keep trying to make this a partisan issue rather than getting you own party to actually READ the constitution.
Re:Useful feedback? (Score:5, Informative)
Every time I've tried the beta and try to see the comments, I get
Shazbot! We ran into some trouble getting the comments.
Try again... na-nu, na-nu!
signed another long time user who will be gone if the classic interface goes away.