Congress should embrace the surveillance overhaul compromise bill...
Congress should embrace the surveillance overhaul compromise bill that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is preparing to unveil this week, The New York Times editorial board said (http://nyti.ms/1zmVSed). The bill, not yet released but expected to be announced…
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Tuesday, is a “breakthrough” and “a significant improvement over the halfhearted measure passed by the House in May,” the board said. The legislation is based on a measure Leahy introduced last fall, known as the USA Freedom Act. The House passed a version of the USA Freedom Act that many privacy advocates and lawmakers said was far too watered down. Leahy’s revised bill “would require the agency to ask for the records of a specific person or address it is tracking, instead of conducting a broad dragnet of an entire area code or city in the hopes of turning up something useful,” the board said. “The new bill would also make the process more transparent by requiring the government to disclose how many people’s data was collected by intelligence agencies, and how many of those people were American.” Leahy should add a provision on backdoor surveillance, “a proposal requiring the government to get the court’s permission before examining communications of Americans that were collected when tracking foreigners,” the board added.