[Infowarrior] - More Excuses on the 'Patriot' Act

[Richard Forno]

More Excuses on the Patriot Act

By THE EDITORIAL BOARDMAY 1, 2015

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/02/opinion/more-excuses-on-the-patriot-act.html

Software designers have a term — “minimal viable product” — to describe early versions of things like iPhone apps that they can rush to market. The idea is to get something out and refine it as you go along. That’s the argument being made for a measure in Congress that would modify the Patriot Act to make it somewhat harder for the government to conduct mass surveillance of Americans without regard to whether they committed wrongdoing.

Sure, there are compromises, Americans are told, but we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The bill is a “critical first step toward reining in” surveillance by the National Security Agency and is a basis for more reform, said Human Rights Watch.

Except the Constitution is not Candy Crush.

The same idea — let’s do what we can and improve it later — was used to shove the original Patriot Act through Congress. It was used to justify the inadequate changes later made to the act, many of which made it more intrusive on Americans’ rights. In 2008, we got a “reform” of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, that provided retroactive cover for the illegal surveillance of innocent Americans conducted under President George W. Bush behind the false flag of counterterrorism.

The new bill, the USA Freedom Act, was passed by the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday in a 25-to-2 vote and sent to the floor for what seems like near-certain approval. It does contain useful changes to Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which was cynically misinterpreted by the Bush administration to cover the collection of millions of telephone records in the United States and elsewhere. Section 215 will expire on June 1 if Congress does not act, but that is unlikely.

The new bill would narrow the kinds of records, including so-called metadata from phone calls, that the intelligence agencies can collect without bothering to obtain a warrant even from the obliging FISA court, which virtually always grants them. It adds transparency measures related to government surveillance programs, and provides for more oversight of those programs.

But many of those provisions are weaker than in earlier versions of the bill, and weaker than they need to be. The House committee rejected amendments designed to provide greater safeguards for civil liberties — including one from a Republican that would have required the government to get a warrant before searching collected communications for information about Americans.

The bill does not end the bulk collection of surveillance data under Section 215. Rather, it limits those operations, which, in addition to eroding the Bill of Rights, have been shown to be worthless in  protecting America.

The American Civil Liberties Union believes the bill doesn’t sufficiently tighten the definition of the terms used to justify data collection, or properly limit the retention of information about people who are not suspected of wrongdoing, or require meaningful disclosure of so-called “backdoor” searches of databases by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It does not appoint an advocate to argue before the FISA court on behalf of civil liberties, instead simply appointing a panel of experts to advise the court, where only the government is allowed to present a case, in secret.

The A.C.L.U. is not opposing the new bill formally, but Jameel Jaffer, the organization’s deputy legal director, said it would be better to simply let Section 215 expire.

What is far more likely is that this bill will be weakened further in the Senate by the majority leader, Mitch McConnell, and other opponents of reform. When that happens, Americans will be told that this is the best we’re going to get and that Congress will get around to “real reform” later.

That will not happen before the 2016 election and most likely won’t happen after. Get used to the protections of your civil liberties being minimally viable.

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It's better to burn out than fade away.