Senator Pat Leahy: Bulk collection of metadata must stop

[Yandorio]

The respectable Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is sick of it.

He doesn't simply want the NSA to stop making the wrong "queries".

He wants the mere collection of metadata on all Americans to stop.

This is what the ACLU, Glenn Greenwald and other privacy advocates and legal scholars have been calling for:

New York Times (Sept. 10, 2013): Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, welcomed the release of the documents, but said that they showed “systemic problems” and that the bulk collection of Americans’ phone records should be stopped.

The "it's-just-metadata" crowd takes another hit.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/11/us/court-upbraided-nsa-on-its-use-of-call-log-data.html?_r=0

[silvershadow]

1. Bump. Also, welcome to DU!

[Initech]

2. He's not intimidated by thugs!

Slightly off topic did you know Leahy was *THAT* guy in The Dark Knight?

[Ichingcarpenter]

4. Thanks and welcome to DU

The NSA lies to all branches of government and think they are the government.

[JDPriestly]

5. This is a step in the right direction.

Nothing wrong with obtaining a limited amount of information from telephone records in criminal cases or when there is already a reasonable suspicion of or perhaps alternatively probably cause to suspect terrorism. But the grounds in the specific case should be set forth in detailed form in a filed, court document such as a subpoena. That may require a change in custom and law, but in this age of the internet when all our private data is available from our phone records, the mass collection of data from communication records of Americans within and without the US should not be allowed.

We should be far more discerning about which non-citizens we allow to enter the US legally. In other countries in which I lived as a foreigner for any length of time, I was expected to report my presence and my overnight location to the local police authorities. We should require that of foreign nationals here.

American residents have, in a very few isolated cases, committed what were classed as terrorist acts. But those have been rarer than apolitical, violent acts against groups of people by American citizens and green-card holders.

I have always felt that 9/11 and other terrorist acts including mass murders whether intended to intimidate for political reasons or simply performed by someone insane should be investigated as ordinary police matters.

Political murders by people belonging to extremist groups, right or left, religious or secular, are crimes, just as are those committed by jilted lovers or bitter ex-employees. The deaths and injuries cause the same sorrow to the survivors, the same losses to society. If more than one person is involved in the planning, it is a conspiracy. And if the planning occurred in more than one country, it is an international conspiracy and should be investigated as such.

That's my opinion. Law enforcement should be capable of investigating these matters without spending so much money on collecting and analyzing all our metadata and invading our privacy. It is intimidating to have the government own so much private information about any or all of us. It is unnecessary. We are not free when that is going on.

[Little Star]

6. k&r

[Uncle Joe]

7. I hope this thread gets a thousand recommendations.

Thanks for the thread and welcome to D.U. Yandorio

[leftstreet]

8. There is no spying on Americans

Obama To Leno: 'There Is No Spying On Americans'

by Greg Henderson
August 07, 201312:44 AM


President Obama defended the US government's surveillance program, telling NBC's Jay Leno on Tuesday that: "There is no spying on Americans."

"We don't have a domestic spying program," Obama said on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. "What we do have is some mechanisms that can track a phone number or an email address that is connected to a terrorist attack. ... That information is useful."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/08/06/209692380/obama-to-leno-there-is-no-spying-on-americans

DURec

Welcome to DU!

[marions ghost]

10. Yes there is...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/black-budget/

A very well-funded, entrenched & pervasive surveillance system is in place.

[SidDithers]

9. Come back soon, again...nt

Sid

[marions ghost]

11. Thank you Senator Leahy

“The documents only begin to uncover the abuses of the huge databases of information the N.S.A. has of innocent Americans’ calling records,” said Mark M. Jaycox, a policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He said the agency’s explanation — that none of its workers fully understood the phone metadata program — showed “how much of a rogue agency the N.S.A. has become.”

Judge Walton’s ruling, originally classified as top secret, did not go that far. But he wrote that the privacy safeguards approved by the court “have been so frequently and systematically violated” that they “never functioned effectively.”

Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, welcomed the release of the documents, but said that they showed “systemic problems” and that the bulk collection of Americans’ phone records should be stopped.


Intelligence officials have expressed some willingness to adjust the program in response to complaints from Congress and the public, possibly by requiring the phone companies, rather than the N.S.A., to stockpile the call data. But they say that the program remains crucial in detecting terrorist plots and is now being run in line with the court’s rules."

[MotherPetrie]

12. K&R

[WillyT]

13. K & R !!!