Senate Bill Would Ban Most Bulk Surveillance 176
An anonymous reader writes: Today Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced a bill that would ban bulk collection of telephone records and internet data for U.S. citizens. This is a stronger version of the legislation that passed the U.S. House in May, and it has support from the executive branch as well. "The bill, called the USA Freedom Act, would prohibit the government from collecting all information from a particular service provider or a broad geographic area, such as a city or area code, according to a release from Leahy's office. It would expand government and company reporting to the public and reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which reviews NSA intelligence activities. Both House and Senate measures would keep information out of NSA computers, but the Senate bill would impose stricter limits on how much data the spy agency could seek."
Re:For domestic use only (Score:4, Informative)
Decentralized Internet is badly needed
Very true, that is the only real solution to this problem. Whether corporations, governments, or criminals, the value in surveillance is too great to be resisted. The only solution is increasing the cost and detecting it when it happens. Decentralization will both make it more expensive to do generalized surveillance, and make it harder to do it without getting caught.
and nothing seems to be in works...
Not as true.
OwnCloud [wikipedia.org] lets you host your own dropbox, mobile-to-desktop sync, etc.
MediaGoblin [mediagoblin.org] lets you host your own replacement for YouTube.
Asterisk [wikipedia.org] lets you host an end-to-end encrypted replacement for Skype.
Tor [wikipedia.org] and I2P [wikipedia.org] let you slip past your ISP's surveillance net.
That's just the tip of the iceberg. Learn more at Stop-Prism.org [stop-prism.org].
Re:Golly, the "USA Freedom Ac" - it must be good! (Score:4, Informative)
and it has support from the executive branch as well
Never mind. We're doomed.
Re:Smells like BS (Score:5, Informative)