Snowden has no crediblity, and deserves no thanks.

[DevonRex]

139. Debate on Senate floor in December on Leahy, Wyden and Merkel amendments:

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2012_cr/faa-amend.html
[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 168 (Thursday, December 27, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8384-S8410]

**My thoughts. The entire transcript is here. The debate is vigorous and thorough. Any fool can see their concerns. Where they failed, and I believe, deliberately in the case of Leahy, is in in overstepping. This amendment indeed goes further than FISA. Much further. The Judiciary Committee would have had a fit over it for the very reasons Senator Feinstein states, although she didn't say they'd have a fit, naturally. I believe every Senator who voted yea knew it would not pass. Including the author of the amendment. But the yay votes looked good to some of their constituents, didn't they?

I don't mean this to be harsh. That's politics. Actually, it shows that many of them, like Franken, see both sides of the issue and are trying desperately to find a way to shown they do understand. Because they really do. They're not dumb. They really DO believe the same things we do. On the other hand, they have also seen things that would scare the shit out of you. Really. So, here's Leahy's Amendment.

SEC. ___. FOURTH AMENDMENT PRESERVATION AND PROTECTION ACT OF
2012.

(a) Short Title.--This section may be cited as the ''Fourth
Amendment Preservation and Protection Act of 2012''.
(b) Findings.--Congress finds that the right under the
Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of
the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and
effects against unreasonable searches and seizures is
violated when the Federal Government or a State or local
government acquires information voluntarily relinquished by a
person to another party for a limited business purpose
without the express informed consent of the person to the
specific request by the Federal Government or a State or
local government or a warrant, upon probable cause, supported
by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place
to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
``(c) Definition.--In this section, the term ``system of
records'' means any group of records from which information
is retrieved by the name of the individual or by some
identifying number, symbol, or other identifying particular
associated with the individual.
(d) Prohibition.--
(1) In general.--Except as provided in paragraph (2), the
Federal Government and a State or local government is
prohibited from obtaining or seeking to obtain information
relating to an individual or group of individuals held by a
third-party in a system of records, and no such information
shall be admissible in a criminal prosecution in a court of
law.
(2) Exception.--The Federal Government or a State or local
government may obtain, and a court may admit, information
relating to an individual held by a third-party in a system
of records if--
(A) the individual whose name or identification information
the Federal Government or State or local government is using
to access the information provides express and informed
consent to the search; or
(B) the Federal Government or State or local government
obtains a warrant, upon probable cause, supported by oath or
affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be
searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
-------

**And here's Senator Feinstein's objection to it:

Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Madam President, I rise in opposition to this
amendment. This amendment is extraordinarily broad. It is much broader
than FISA, and in the course of my remarks, I would hope to address how
broad it is. It essentially bars Federal, State, and local governments
from obtaining any information relating to an individual that is held
by a third party unless the government first obtains either a warrant
or consent from the individual. This is also not germane to FISA. It
has not been reviewed by the Judiciary Committee, which would have
jurisdiction over this matter. For that reason alone, I would vote
against it. Also, it impedes the timely reauthorization of the FISA
Amendments Act.
I also oppose the substance of the amendment. The amendment is titled
the ``Fourth Amendment Preservation and Protection Act.'' In reality,
it seeks to reverse over 30 years of Supreme Court precedent
interpreting the fourth amendment.
In 1967 the Supreme Court established its reasonable expectation of
privacy test under the fourth amendment, in the case of Katz v. United
States. Nine years later, in a case known as U.S. v. Miller, the
Supreme Court held:

[T]he Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the obtaining of
information revealed to a third party and conveyed by him to
Government authorities.

So already you have a Supreme Court case saying that the fourth
amendment does not prohibit the use of this kind of information by the
government.
The Miller case involved the government obtaining account records
from a bank. But in 1979, just 3 years after Miller, the Supreme Court
took up the issue of third-party collection in a case involving the
installation and use of pen registers, which are electronic devices
that enable law enforcement to collect telephone numbers dialed from a
particular phone line without listening to the content of those calls.
The 1973 case is known as Smith v. Maryland, and in it the Court held:

[W]e doubt that people in general entertain any actual
expectation of privacy in the numbers they dial. All
telephone users realize that they must ``convey'' phone
numbers to the telephone company, since it is through
telephone company switching equipment that their calls are
completed. All subscribers realize, moreover, that the phone
company has facilities for making permanent records of the
numbers they dial, for they see a list of their long-distance
(toll) calls on their monthly bills. . . . Telephone users .
. . typically know that they must convey numerical
information to the phone company; that the phone company has
facilities for recording this information; and that the phone
company does in fact record this information for a variety of
legitimate business purposes. Although subjective
expectations cannot be scientifically gauged, it is too much
to believe that telephone subscribers, under these
circumstances, harbor any general expectation that the
numbers they dial will remain secret. . . . This Court
consistently has held that a person has no legitimate
expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns
over to third parties.

More recently, in the Court's 2012 decision in U.S. v. Jones, some
Justices have questioned whether the time has come to revisit Miller
and Smith in some form. Now, perhaps they are right, but this amendment
isn't the form they had in mind. And this isn't the time to do so.
This amendment is so broad that the police could not use cell phone
data to find a missing or kidnapped child without a warrant or the
consent of the missing child--impossible to get. Similarly, they could
not ask the phone company to provide the home address of a terrorist,
drug dealer, or other criminal without consent or warrant. They could
not ask a bank if such criminals had recently deposited large sums of
money. In fact, as written, this amendment would prohibit law
enforcement from looking up the name, address, and phone number of a
criminal suspect, witness, or any other person online unless they
obtained a warrant or the consent of the criminal suspect. As you can
see, the amendment is too broad.
As I have already stated, the FAA authorities expire in 4 days. If
those authorities are allowed to lapse, our intelligence agencies will
be deprived of a critical tool that enables those agencies to acquire
vital information about international terrorists and other important
targets overseas, plus what they may be plotting in the United States.
It is imperative that we pass a clean reauthorization of these
authorities without amendments that will hamper passage in the House.
I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.

And I would also like to note one more thing in Ms. Feinstein's favor:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2012_cr/feinstein-lee2.html

SEC. 1032. PROHIBITION ON THE INDEFINITE DETENTION OF
CITIZENS AND LAWFUL PERMANENT RESIDENTS.