The ‘USA Freedom Act’ Is A Fraud

by Justin Raimondo, 

In the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations, the rush was on to rein in – or appear to rein in – the Surveillance State. The only really authentic effort was led by Rep. Justin Amash, the libertarian Braveheart, whose bill to completely defund the unconstitutional activities of the National Security Agency was narrowly defeated by a coalition of Clintonian Democrats and neoconservative Republicans.

But that wasn’t the end of it.

Two camps coalesced around two completely different concepts of "reform": Sen. Diane Feinstein introduced the "FISA Improvement Act," essentially an extension of the NSA’s powers. Rep. Jim Sensenbrunner (R-Wisconsin), author of the infamous "Patriot" Act, called it "a joke," and the bill was universally mocked.

On the other side of the barricades, the proponents of the original USA Freedom Act basically dismantled the promiscuous collection of Americans’ phone records and other communications by the NSA. While Feinstein’s bill languished with few co-sponsors and little support, the Freedom Act made it to the Judiciary Committee – where it was gutted of most of its content. As I wrote at the time:

"The ‘compromise’ bill deploys the time-honored bureaucratic weapon of linguistic obfuscation to redefine language and use it in ways no ordinary person would recognize. In translating the intent of legislators into lingo describing the technical architecture of our emerging police state, terms like ‘selector’ can be interpreted broadly enough to put not even a dent in the NSA’s armor.

"The final legislative product will be an amalgamation of the language contained in both the original Sensenbrenner bill and the Feinstein extension of the NSA’s powers, leading to the creation of a new hybrid system in which the power of the State to track, surveil, and investigate Americans on suspicion of ‘terrorism’ will be extended in more ways than it is (theoretically) restricted."

This is precisely what has occurred with the final bill. Rather than fundamentally changing the way the NSA scoops up data, the bill merely outsources collection to immunized telecoms, compelling them to do the NSA’s dirty work.

The "Freedom Act" is quite free with its Orwellian redefinition of common words to mean the exact opposite of what they have traditionally meant: for example, the bill defines a "selector" in such a way as to permit NSA to report a dragnet order collectingeveryone’s VISA bill as a single order targeting specific alleged terrorist outfits – when, in the real world, it would legalize surveillance of over 300 million US citizens. No wonder Deputy NSA Director Richard Ledgett says that under the terms of the bill "the actual universe of potential calls that could be queried against is [potentially] dramatically larger." 

Under the present arrangement, government spies must operate within certain parameters that theoretically minimize "accidental" collections of Americans’ data. The bill actually weakens these existing minimization procedures: instead of encoding them in law it hands the job of devising "privacy procedures" to the Attorney General, rather than the FISA court. What this means is that, under the proposed legislation, if the court found the NSA or other government agency spying on an individual (and his or her network of friends and acquaintances) because they engaged in constitutionally protected speech, the court would no longer have the authority to demand the destruction of those records. This is a giant step backward.

The so-called "transparency" provisions in the bill contain numerous loopholes, including exemptions for back door searches by the FBI, and the possibility that the DNI may issue a certification claiming there are operational reasons why he or she can’t report the number of Americans whose information has been collected. Rather than reveal anything meaningful, the provisions in the bill covering statistics to be submitted by the government will actually hide how many individuals are having theirnon-communications records – purchases, financial records, etc. – collected and stored. Under the procedures set up by this bill, we’ll never know how many Americans the FBI is spying on by collecting and storing their emails, call records, Internet searches, etc., because the reporting procedures are designed to conceal.

The misnamed "USA Freedom Act" holds out the promise of "reform," but its main purpose is to mislead. It doesn’t minimize the intrusive surveillance techniques currently used by the NSA and other government agencies: instead it codifies them, in some instances, and in other instances masks ongoing abuses.

Some civil liberties groups, like the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, argue that the present bill is "a first step," and is better than nothing. This is nonsense: this bill is worse than nothing. With the passage of the USA Freedom Act the momentum for real reform will be blunted and allowed to dissipate. Further efforts to roll back the awful power of the NSA will be met with cries of "Didn’t we already do this?" If this bill passes, the Washington insiders will win out, and the Surveillance State will remain intact – arguably even more powerful than before.

Some may say: But aren’t you taking an all-or-nothing attitude? The answer is: not at all. A real reform means a partial reining in of the NSA, with no new extensions of its reach. This bill includes a full-scale codification of abuses coupled with ambiguous and easily reinterpreted "reforms" that don’t mean what they appear to mean.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), one of the original supporters of the bill before it was gutted, has said through an aide that Sen. Leahy’s reforms "don’t go far enough. There are significant problems with the bill, the most notable being an extension of the Patriot Act through December 2017."

This is the kind of radical-but-reasonable stance that can lead to real reform – not the phony variety being pushed by Sen. Leahy, the ACLU, and the rest of the limp-wristed beaten-down liberals who have grown so accustomed to the Warfare State that they can’t imagine anything else. Their timidity won’t restore our old Republic – only the principled stance taken by Sen. Paul and those calling for the outright repeal of the odious "Patriot" Act have a shot at doing that.

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2014/11/16/the-usa-freedom-act-is-a-fraud/