Very cool. I used that type of thing before. Put my phone number into the website, it calls me immediately and then all I do is enter in my zip code and it automatically connects me to my representative with the script right there in front of me to read. Takes about a minute.
Will do it in the morning. Thank you, Cory.
I see no reason to call them…I will just add my thoughts to my emails…they should get them.
So, does the amendment actually offer any way to enforce it, or is it just another iteration of begging the NSA to listen, and then shrugging when they ignore it?
Hopefully someone more succinct will provide elucidation.
The bill is more than nothing, but the cynic in me says the merits start and end there.
It doesn’t read to me like the proposed amendment eliminates mass surveillance*. It appears to eliminate paying persons to check out surveillance data in an effort to read the communications of a particular person without consent or justification. Someone please check out the bill, which is a short read and linked to by the site provided, to see if you get the same from it. Particularly the implications of:
Lines 7 through 13 of page 1 (rules). …[blah blah blah money can’t be used to] conduct a search of a collection of communications…to find communications of a particular person.
Lines 13 and 14 of page 2 (exceptions). [unless] such person has consented to the search [of a collection of communications].
I.E. government money still gets used to collect information*. They only need consent (or “justification” as established on prior lines of page 2) for using government money to finance the person-hours needed to search the collected information to find a particular person’s communications.
In conclusion, I believe the amendment being voted on only prohibits using money to pay humans to search collected data with a manner that obviously excludes the search to a particular nonthreat citizen, which is an act I imagine is nearly impossible to prove they undertook. I also don’t believe the amendment would prevent the government from using computers to run through the communications looking for keywords because I don’t think machines are “officers or employees”.
*: Somebody else can prolly give a way, way more erudite breakdown of FISA stuff, but, from what little I know of the FISA Amendments Act alluded to by the bill being voted on, the government can’t technically track the communications of a given U.S. citizen stateside. However, the government can acquire information from telecommunications companies without those companies being in danger of the threat of any legal action. So the deal is that The Man can’t actively acquire data, or something, but He can passively receive it from companies He strongly encouraged to jump on board.
Yeah, this is narrow and not at all the sweeping END OF MASS SURVEILLANCE promised by the headline. It’s a step in the right direction, but it applies only to searches of authorized and legally acquired captures of communications of non-US citizens. It’s nothing more than the tip of the mass-surveillance iceberg.
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