As we detailed earlier, in a chaotic scene during the wee hours of Saturday, Senate Republicans blocked a bill known as the USA Freedom Act [8]- backed by President Barack Obama, House Republicans and the nation's top law enforcement and intelligence officials - which would have preserved the government's ability to search phone company records for suspected spies and terrorists. As AP reports, [9] the failure to act means the NSA will immediately begin curtailing its previously-secret bulk data collection progreams with The DoJ noting that while it will take time to taper off the collection process, that process began Friday (according to an administration official). Sen. Rand Paul called the Senate's failure to allow an extension of the surveillance programs a victory for privacy rights, adding "we should never give up our rights for a false sense of security."
We explained Rand Paul's refusal to play by the Washington script earlier and how the Senate failure to extend the Patriot Act leaves the future of America's "war against terrorists" - but really against "enemies domestic", i.e., anyone who uses email, has a cell phone or in any other electronic way communicates with others - in limbo.
Now, it appears, as AP reports [9], the de-esclation of The NSA is escalating rather faster than many had dared to hope for...
The National Security Agency has begun winding down its collection and storage of American phone records after the Senate failed to agree on a path forward to change or extend the once-secret program ahead of its expiration at the end of the month.
Barring an 11th hour compromise when the Senate returns to session May 31, a much-debated provision of the Patriot Act - and some other lesser known surveillance tools - will sunset at midnight that day. The change also would have a major impact on the FBI, which uses the Patriot Act and the other provisions to gather records in investigations of suspected spies and terrorists.
In a chaotic scene during the wee hours of Saturday, Senate Republicans blocked a bill known as the USA Freedom Act, which would have ended the NSA's bulk collection but preserved its ability to search the records held by the phone companies on a case-by-case basis. The bill was backed by President Barack Obama, House Republicans and the nation's top law enforcement and intelligence officials.
...
The failure to act means the NSA will immediately begin curtailing its searches of domestic phone records for connections to international terrorists. The Justice Department said in a statement that it will take time to taper off the collection process from the phone companies. That process began Friday, said an administration official who would not be identified because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
As a reminder, Section 215 of the Patriot Act is used by the government to justify collecting the "to and from" information about nearly every American landline telephone call.
When former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the program in 2013, many Americans were outraged that NSA had their calling records. Obama ultimately announced a plan similar to the USA Freedom Act and asked Congress to pass it. He said the plan would preserve the NSA's ability to hunt for domestic connections to international plots without having an intelligence agency hold millions of Americans' private records.
Since it gave the government extraordinary powers, Section 215 of the Patriot Act was designed to expire at midnight on May 31 unless Congress renews it. An appeals court has ruled that the phone collection does not comply with the law, but stayed the ruling while Congress debated.
And so it's end is not just legally 'correct' but ethically so too...
Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky's other senator and a Republican presidential candidate, called the Senate's failure to allow an extension of the surveillance programs a victory for privacy rights.
"We should never give up our rights for a false sense of security," Paul said in a statement.
Some civil liberties groups joined Paul in praising the result, saying they would rather see the Patriot Act provision authorizing NSA phone collection expire altogether.
"For the first time, a majority of senators took a stand against simply rubber-stamping provisions of the Patriot Act that have been used to spy on Americans," said Michael Macleod-Ball, acting director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.
...and here are 10 reasons, thanks to Rand Paul, why this should never have happened in the first place...
10 Great Points From Rand Paul's Personal Patriot Act Attack
(via Matt Welch of Reason.com) [10]
1) Warrants need to be "individualized," because collective law enforcement is the root of much evil.
Paul's root opposition to the Patriot Act is that it is being used as the legal justification for the collection of bulk data against unsuspecting U.S. citizens who no one believes have committed a crime. His opposition to the reforming USA Freedom Act [11] is that it still allows the government to compel third-party companies like Verizon to cough up 100 percent of its customer metadata.
Either way, Paul has stressed all day, this is antithetical to both the Fourth Amendment and the American tradition of individual rights. Collective guilt is what underpinned the segregationist horrors of the Jim Crow south, and of the indefensible internment [12] of Japanese-Americans during World War II. The people who really need the Bill of Rights, he has said, are not the prom queens and homecoming kings, but people who are in a disfavored minority, whether ideological, religious, or racial.
2) Internet/telephone/data companies should put up "unified resistance" to federal compulsion to turn over user data.
It’s not every day that you see a sitting U.S. senator calling for straight-up civil disobedience [13]. But in an era where the Supreme Court has yet to definitively rule on the third-party doctrine [14] governing what intermediaries have to do when requested by the government to cough up all user data, building up a bigger cultural expectation of privacy [15] is crucial if our credit-card data and cloud storage is going to be proferred traditional 4th Amendment protection.
3) "We're using the Patriot Act to put [drug offenders] in prison."
One of the least remembered scandals in the Summer of Snowden is that the Drug Enforcement Agency has been collecting bulk metadata with all the same gusto [16] as the National Security Agency, even though the DEA is supposed to enforce the law on U.S. citizens who are afforded protections from the Constitution. In fact, the DEA has been using the NSA's data [17]. Patriot Act mission creep might not be news to Reason readers [18], but that makes it no less indefensible.
4) "Government by cliff is a recipe for disaster."
That's a quote from Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), not Rand Paul, though the two have long agreed about this principle. The Patriot Act expires at the end of May. "It's been three years since we've known this date is coming," Paul said. Why in hell hasn’t there been a debate, with amendments, in the Senate? Why does Capitol Hill lurch from cliff to cliff, instead of actually do the job of governing? I suppose this bad habit of mind is good for certain opportunistic politicians with a sense of theater, but it's just lousy for the country. The Republicans run the joint; the dysfunction is now squarely on them.
5) "It was done by executive decree, it can be undone by executive decree."
Paul has continuously bemoaned President Barack Obama's civil-liberties switcheroo when in office, a topic he talked with me about in a September 2013 (bottom of the post [19]). As he rightly points out, most of the actions civil libertarians are complaining about are pure inventions and executions by the executive branch. If the president cares about this stuff as much as he occasionally pretends to be, he can actually stop collecting the metadata.
6) The government is "using records to gain entrance to people, and then tak[ing] their stuff without conviction."
The connection between civil asset forfeiture and NSA surveillance might not be immediately obvious, but Paul has done a bravura job in making the link. A government that can take your money—even if you are never charged with a crime—because it doesn't like the way you deposit it in your bank [20], is a government that should not be trusted with holding all your seemingly innocuous third-party information.
7) "The Constitution is an end to itself."
That's another one from Mike Lee (who, it should be stressed, is wholly in favor of the USA Freedom Act, which Paul opposes on grounds that it still allows for bulk collection of metadata). Too often people try to locate their defense of the founding document on utilitarian grounds; actually, it's a noble blueprint all on its own.
8) We shoulda listened to William Binney.
William Binney was a crucial, pre-Snowden NSA whistleblower. Don't know who he is, what he saw, how he was threatened, and why he's worried about America’s "totalitarian" turn? Read this Nick Gillespie interview with the guy [21].
9) "The director of national intelligence…wasn't telling the truth."
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper famously lied [22] to Congress under oath about the collection of bulk metadata on millions of Americans. All afternoon, Rand Paul has used the word "lied" to describe what Clapper did. It is bracing to watch government misbehavior called by its proper name.
10) "The presumption of innocence is an incredibly important doctrine that we shouldn't so casually dismiss."
The fact that this has to be said on the floor of the U.S. Senate is appalling. The fact that it is being said at least offers a little hope.
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It appears he - and the many others fighting for liberty and privacy and the constitution - may have actually won one here... or is bulk data collection about to go deep, very deep under cover.
