It’s Time to End Orwellian Surveillance of Every American

U.S. senator Bernie Sanders speaks at a town hall meeting at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union 26 office, May 5, 2015, in Lanham, Maryland. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

I voted against the Patriot Act every time, and it still needs major reform.

 

welcome a federal appeals court ruling that the National Security Agency does not have the legal authority to collect and store data on all U.S. telephone calls. Now Congress should rewrite the expiring eavesdropping provision in the so-called USA Patriot Act and include strong new limits to protect the privacy and civil liberties of the American people.

Let me be clear: We must do everything we can to protect our country from the serious potential of another terrorist attack. We can and must do so, however, in a way that also protects the constitutional rights of the American people and maintains our free society.

Do we really want to live in a country where the NSA gathers data on virtually every single phone call in the United States—including as many as 5 billion cellphone records per day? I don’t. Do we really want our government to collect our emails, see our text messages, know everyone’s Internet browsing history, monitor bank and credit card transactions, keep tabs on people’s social networks? I don’t.

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FISA Court: No Telecom Company Has Ever Challenged Phone Records Orders

Spencer Ackerman (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Spencer Ackerman | Guardian UK | Reader Supported News | September 18, 2013

Judge says requests for mass customer data have not been challenged ‘despite the mechanism for doing so’

No telecommunications company has ever challenged the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court’s orders for bulk phone records under the Patriot Act, the court revealed on Tuesday.

The secretive Fisa court’s disclosure came inside a declassification of its legal reasoning justifying the National Security Agency’s ongoing bulk collection of Americans’ phone records.

Citing the  “unprecedented disclosures ” and the  “ongoing public interest in this program “, Judge Claire V Eagan on 29 August not only approved the Obama administration’s request for the bulk collection of data from an unidentified telecommunications firm, but ordered it declassified. Eagan wrote that despite the  “lower threshold ” for government bulk surveillance under Section 215 of the Patriot Act compared to other laws, the telephone companies who have received Fisa court orders for mass customer data have not challenged the law.

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