Feinstein promotes bill to strengthen NSA’s hand on warrantless searches

The Guardian reports: A Senate bill promoted as a surveillance reform would codify the ability of the National Security Agency to search its troves of foreign phone and email communications for Americans’ information, and permit law enforcement agencies to search the vast databases as well.

The Fisa Improvements Act, promoted by Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, would both make permanent a loophole permitting the NSA to search for Americans’ identifying information without a warrant – and, civil libertarians fear, contains an ambiguity that might allow the FBI, the DEA and other law enforcement agencies to do the same thing.

“For the first time, the statute would explicitly allow the government to proactively search through the NSA data troves of information without a warrant,” said Michelle Richardson, the surveillance lobbyist for the ACLU.

“It may also expand current practices by allowing law enforcement to directly access US person information that was nominally collected for foreign intelligence purposes. This fourth amendment back door needs to be closed, not written into stone.” [Continue reading…]

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One thought on “Feinstein promotes bill to strengthen NSA’s hand on warrantless searches

  1. Norman

    Nails in the coffin. Time this Senator retired, preferably to the funny farm. So out of touch they are with the American people. When things go wrong, instead of fixing them, they make things worse. When the Military is in charge, especially today, the only thing they seem to be good at, is that plain “Clusterfuck”. This is just more of the same. After all, shouldn’t the Senator be impeached for being an Israeli Firster, which I believe is serving a foreign government instead of the one she was elected to serve and who pays her bills.

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