Wednesday, November 13, 2013

PATRIOT Act author rips NSA mass surveillance at EU meeting; says Gen. James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence should be fired and prosecuted; asserts Feinstein law would worsen NSA abuses

GOP Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner is now singing quite a different tune from his past, pre-Snowden refrains, which insisted that the NSA hadn't violated anyone's civil rights and critics needed to chill. A 2006 USA Today editorial by Sensenbreenner began:
Zero. That's the number of substantiated USA Patriot Act civil liberties violations. Extensive congressional oversight found no violations...
     Last summer, after Clapper's tricky dicky denial that the NSA collects "dossiers" en masse, Sen. Ron Wyden asked him point blank: "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?"
     Clapper's answer, here, wasn't just a flat-out lie; it was probably the biggest whopper ever told to Congress in the history of the nation.



From the Register:
     Sensenbrenner slammed legislation introduced by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) on October 31 that would codify into law the NSA's mass collection of private data, albeit with some transparency additions. It would also allow the NSA free rein to investigate any foreign national for 72 hours after they arrive on US shores and introduce a 10-year prison sentence for security contractors who leak information.
     Feinstein, who chairs the Senate intelligence committee that is supposed to oversee and regulate the activities of the NSA, said the bill provides protections, but Sensenbrenner called it "scary," and said it changed nothing, and could make the situation worse.
     "It codifies what the NSA has been doing under bulk collection – until now what they have been doing is because a court says yes, but the Feinstein bill puts what the NSA has been doing into law and says everything is OK."

1 comment:

  1. Isn't it an open secret that the NSA is "secretly" surveillance everyone's move? If you don't have anything to hide or not doing anything illegal then why should you be scared? What’s there to hide? The problem in our society today is our lack of trust; I should include myself because it is true. We have over practiced are liberty, and this pushed the government to watch our every move in the shadows, for our own safety.

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