USA Freedom Act Passes: What We Celebrate, What We Mourn, and Where We Go From Here | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Susanne Posel, The US Independent, November 18, 2014, Facebook, Google: USA Freedom Act Will Restore Customer Confidence,

The Obama administration “strongly supports” SB 2685, the USA Freedom Act (USFA) championed by Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee (SJC) and co-sponsored by:
  • Mike Lee
  • Dick Durbin
  • Dean Heller
  • Al Franken
  • Ted Cruz
  • Richard Blumenthal
  • Tom Udal
  • Chris Coons
  • Martin Heinrich
  • Ed Markey
  • Mazie Hirono
  • Amy Klobuchar
  • Sheldon Whitehouse
  • Chuck Schumer

And it did finally pass, after numerous attempts to water down its NSA restrictions still farther.

Now here’s the rub:

The White House issued a statement: “Without passage of this bill, critical authorities that are appropriately reformed in this legislation could expire next summer. The Administration urges Congress to take action on this legislation now, since delay may subject these important national security authorities to brinksmanship and uncertainty. The Administration urges the Senate to pass the USA Freedom Act and for the House to act expeditiously so that the President can sign legislation into law this year.”

The rub is that there’s no evidence any of those authorities are “critical”. NSA blanket surveillance never caught a single terrorist, and NSA already could spy on actual bad guys before 911. We don’t need blanket surveillance of every message, voice, text, image, and video.

Further, we never would have known about the extent of NSA’s overreach without Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers risking their freedom and maybe their lives.

Another downside is that one Senator running for president who was not an early sponsor of the bill (Rand Paul) is getting a lot of credit when many other hands got it this far. I agree with EFF’s summary.

Cindy Cohn and Mark Jaycox, EFF, 2 June 2015, USA Freedom Act Passes: What We Celebrate, What We Mourn, and Where We Go From Here,

The Senate passed the USA Freedom Act today by 67-32, marking the first time in over thirty years that both houses of Congress have approved a bill placing real restrictions and oversight on the National Security Agency’s surveillance powers. The weakening amendments to the legislation proposed by NSA defender Senate Majority Mitch McConnell were defeated, and we have every reason to believe that President Obama will sign USA Freedom into law. Technology users everywhere should celebrate, knowing that the NSA will be a little more hampered in its surveillance overreach, and both the NSA and the FISA court will be more transparent and accountable than it was before the USA Freedom Act.

It’s no secret that we wanted more. In the wake of the damning evidence of surveillance abuses disclosed by Edward Snowden, Congress had an opportunity to champion comprehensive surveillance reform and undertake a thorough investigation, like it did with the Church Committee. Congress could have tried to completely end mass surveillance and taken numerous other steps to rein in the NSA and FBI. This bill was the result of compromise and strong leadership by Sens. Patrick Leahy and Mike Lee and Reps. Robert Goodlatte, Jim Sensenbrenner, and John Conyers. It’s not the bill EFF would have written, and in light of the Second Circuit’s thoughtful opinion, we withdrew our support from the bill in an effort to spur Congress to strengthen some of its privacy protections and out of concern about language added to the bill at the behest of the intelligence community.

Even so, we’re celebrating. We’re celebrating because, however small, this bill marks a day that some said could never happen—a day when the NSA saw its surveillance power reduced by Congress. And we’re hoping that this could be a turning point in the fight to rein in the NSA.

And there’s more upside:

The USA Freedom Act shows that the digital rights community has leveled up. We’ve gone from just killing bad bills to passing bills that protect people’s rights.

Glenn Greenwald, who released the first of the Snowden material, goes further: Glenn Greenwald: As Bulk NSA Spying Expires, Scare Tactics Can’t Stop “Sea Change” on Surveillance,

I think the greatest significance of the most recent event is more symbolic than anything else, but it’s still actually quite significant. It’s really worth comparing the debate that we’re now having to what passed for a debate both in 2005 and 2011 over whether to renew the PATRIOT Act. Remember, even after 9/11, in the weeks after 9/11 when the country was willing to give the government essentially anything that it asked for, the PATRIOT Act was regarded as this extremely radical piece of legislation, a very fundamental departure from how we always understood what the government could and couldn’t do when spying on us. And even in the wake of 9/11, it was regarded that way. And that’s the reason why, when it was enacted, embedded into some of these provisions was the idea that, look, this is only supposed to be a temporary measure; it will automatically go away, sunset, lapse every five—unless Congress every five years reauthorizes it. And in 2005, the Bush administration demanded its renewal with no reforms. And in 2010, the Obama administration did exactly the same thing: demanded renewal of the PATRIOT Act with no reforms. And there was almost no opposition in either house of Congress, either political party, just some token opposition from some libertarians, and Congress easily and overwhelmingly renewed the PATRIOT Act.

The fact that we’re now having this very contentious debate, where the PATRIOT Act actually has lapsed, at least for a few days, and that we’re going to have some kind of change in the law that we’re calling reform underscores how significantly public opinion has changed and the climate of the country has changed, the views of the tech community have changed, when it comes to how much surveillance we’re willing to allow our government to engage in against us in the name of terrorism. I think that’s really the greatest significance, is the sea change that this represents.

Shakespeare, The Tempest,

Full fathom five thy father lies:
Of his bones are coral made:
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

Privacy and freedom: that would be rich and strange. And now it can happen.

-jsq