The Senate Intelligence Committee Really Wants to Secretly Snoop on Americans

[EasyAce]

Every attempt to restrain and reform unwarranted domestic surveillance batted away.
By Scott Shackford
http://reason.com/blog/2017/11/15/the-senate-intelligence-committee-really/print

A newly released report from the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence shows how thoroughly
its members are resisting any efforts to protect Americans from unwarranted surveillance.

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments is up for renewal this year, or
it expires. Section 702 is intended to be used to authorize federal agencies to surveil communications for
foreign targets for anti-terror, anti-espionage, and various national defense purposes . . .

. . . As lawmakers consider renewing Section 702, there has been a big push by privacy activists and civil
rights organizations to limit what the FBI and NSA may do and to reduce the amount of domestic communications
the federal government is allowed to collect and access.

But it looks like the Senate Intelligence Committee isn't having it. They're advancing a bill by Committee
Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) that does pretty much the opposite of what civil liberties and privacy-minded
folks would like and fully codifies that these tools intended for foreign surveillance can and may be used to
fight domestic crimes and snoop on American citizens without warrants.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown noted in October how Burr's bill actually advanced the permission to use these snooping
powers against Americans. The newly released report shows this is clearly the intent of Burr and the Senate
committee. They voted down several amendments to attempt to make it clear that the law is not supposed
to be used to snoop on Americans . . .