Yesterday, legislation was introduced in Congress that
purports to rein in the NSA’s mass surveillance programs. It’s called
the USA FREEDOM Act (as was a similar bill last year), and we don’t think that
it goes far enough.
USA FREEDOM might do something very modest to constrain
the NSA's behavior under the particular authorities that that agency has
exploited to collect information about all of Americans’ phone calls.
But it also does some definitively terrible
things, like giving companies immunity for facilitating government
spying — and extending the very authority the NSA has manipulated to engage in
mass surveillance.
Moreover, it doesn’t address the fundamental
problem: That the NSA is a rogue agency that operates under a
cloak of darkness without meaningful oversight or checks on its power, and will
lie and violate the law with impunity.
Even if the NSA’s ability to spy on us is
constrained slightly, for now, we can expect it to do all in its power to warp
the law — and torture the English language — to find justifications for ever
more-expansive surveillance.
And because oversight is so limited, because
Congressional leadership and the House and Senate Intelligence Committees are so
captured by the surveillance agencies and contractors, we won’t even
find out about the NSA’s new schemes until another whistleblower
surfaces in 10 or 20 years.
To learn more about why we are opposing this bill, you
can read our press release about USA FREEDOM here.
Here's where you come in: Time is running out — a
committee vote on USA FREEDOM is expected TOMORROW.
If you agree with our take on the USA
FREEDOM Act, can you make a call to your member of Congress and ask them to
oppose USA FREEDOM because it doesn't go far enough — and to support key
amendments to make it better?
Thanks for standing strong.
—David, Daniel, Mark, Sara and the rest of the Demand
Progress team
PAID FOR BY DEMAND PROGRESS (DemandProgress.org) and not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. Contributions are not deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes.
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