Tag Archives: data collection

Civil Liberties, Featured, Government Accountability, Privacy

Former NSA Director Says ‘Golden Age Of Electronic Surveillance’ Is Coming To An End, NSA Numbers Show He’s Wrong

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(DCNF) Former National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency director Michael Hayden said in a podcast on Monday that the “golden age of electronic surveillance” is coming to an end, despite reports that indicate the opposite is true.

“Now we might be actually seeing another shift,” Hayden said on the podcast “Recode Decode,” citing the Christopher Steele dossier, adding that the new era will include “all human-sourced” information.

The NSA tripled its collection of American phone calls in 2017, going from 383 million records in 2016 to 534 million records in 2017, according to a U.S. intelligence agency report published on May 4. (RELATED: NSA Tripled The Amount Of Surveillance It Conducted In 2017)

Hayden, who was appointed Director of the NSA by both former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, made clear he was talking about “legitimate targets, and legitimate targeting,” implicitly trying to distant himself from the NSA’s collection of U.S. citizens’ data. “But it was the golden age of that,” he added.

But U.S. agencies also spied on more non-U.S. citizens living abroad in 2017 than in 2016, according to the same report. U.S. authorities spied on more than 129,000 non-U.S. citizens living abroad in 2017, which was 22,000 more than the previous year. The surveillance of foreigners increased about 45 percent in the past five years.

The U.S. government is not the only entity that conducts electronic surveillance — tech giants have come under fire recently for their role in collecting users’ data. Companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon have all been scrutinized for either collecting phone calls, messages or even listening to conversations.

A Portland, Ore., family discovered their Amazon Echo listened, recorded and sent a private conversation to a person on their contacts list. Amazon said in a statement to The Daily Caller News Foundation on May 25 that the device allegedly “woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like (the wake-up word) ‘Alexa.’ Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a ‘send message’ request. At which point, Alexa said out loud ‘To whom?’ At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customer’s contact list.”

Civil Liberties, Edward Snowden, Featured, Politics, Privacy, States Rights, US

Five Years After Snowden, Michigan Set to Be First State to Impede NSA’s Warrantless Surveillance

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On the heels of the fifth anniversary of whistleblower Edward Snowden’s disclosure of classified National Security Agency (NSA) documents to journalists, one state legislature has recently taken steps to hold the government agency accountable for its warrantless surveillance programs by making it illegal for state and local governments, including law enforcement and public utilities, to support the NSA’s warrantless spying on American citizens.

According to Michigan’s Fourth Amendment Rights Protection Act, also known as Public Act 71 of 2018, state and local governments can only assist or provide support to the federal government’s collection of data if there is a search warrant or the informed consent of the targeted party. The bill is set to take effect in just a few weeks on June 17th.

While the NSA has no publicly disclosed facility in the state, the bill’s proponents have asserted that it sends a clear message to the federal government regarding the lack of popularity for its warrantless wiretapping of millions of Americans in violation of the legal protections granted to them by the Constitution.

“It hangs up a sign on Michigan’s door saying, ‘No violation of the Fourth Amendment, look elsewhere’,” said Republican state Rep. Martin Howrylak, the bill’s author, according to the Washington Examiner. “Democrats as well as Republicans would certainly stand very strong in our position on what this law means.”

“This new law guarantees no state resources will be used to help the federal government execute mass warrantless surveillance programs that violate the Fourth Amendment protections enshrined in the U.S. Constitution,” Howrylak said soon after the bill was first passed earlier this year in March.

“Michigan will not assist the federal government with any data collection unless it is consistent with the constitution,” he added.

The Michigan law seeking to condemn the NSA’s most controversial program is not the first of its kind. However, it is the first to have been passed successfully without having been  subsequently watered down. For instance, in 2014, state lawmakers in Maryland sought to shut off power and water to NSA headquarters but many of its sponsors dropped their support of the bill after a powerful political backlash. A similar bill was floated in Utah’s state legislature at the same time, but went nowhere after it was rejected by the state’s governor.

“It hangs up a sign on Michigan’s door saying, ‘No violation of the Fourth Amendment, look elsewhere.'”

The only state to have passed a bill similar to Michigan’s is California, which passed the Fourth Amendment Protection Act in 2014. However, that piece of legislation protects the Fourth Amendment in name only as it bans local assistance “in response to a request from a federal agency” and “if the state has actual knowledge that the request constitutes an illegal or unconstitutional collection.”

Despite the efforts being made by state legislatures to restore the Fourth Amendment, such efforts have been largely absent at the national level in recent years. Earlier this year, in January, Congress voted to extend the government’s warrantless surveillance of American citizens for another six years. However, Congress’ reauthorization of the program was more than a mere extension of the program as it actually helped expand the NSA’s authority by codifying some of the more controversial aspects of the program, suggesting that interest in protecting and restoring the Constitution is largely found at the state and local levels of government.

Civil Liberties, Featured, Politics, Privacy, Technology, US

Civil Liberties Groups Warn CLOUD Act In Spending Bill Erodes Privacy

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Last Friday, President Donald Trump signed the controversial $1.3 trillion government spending bill into law, despite opposition from concerned citizens and senators who complained the public did not have adequate time to read the 2,232-page bill. The massive bill was handed to representatives on Wednesday night and put to a vote the following morning. The bill passed the House with a 256-167 vote and the Senate with a 65-32 vote, before being sent to Trump.

The vast majority of the funds— about $700 billion— will be going to the Department of Defense to continue funding America’s expanding empire. However, as is typical in Washington D.C., the bill was not only focused on government spending.

“In the final pages of the bill—meant only to appropriate future government spending—lawmakers snuck in a separate piece of legislation that made no mention of funds, salaries, or budget cuts,” The Electronic Frontier Foundation reported. “Instead, this final, tacked-on piece of legislation will erode privacy protections around the globe.”

The bill in question is The Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act, or CLOUD Act, and its stated goal is to establish new standards for how the government acquires data outside of its jurisdiction. The CLOUD Act was heavily supported by the Department of Justice and major tech companies who stated the bill would advance consumer rights.

[RELATED: Trust Lost: How Social Media Users’ Data Should Be Protected]

Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rand Paul (R-KY) released a joint statement demanding the CLOUD Act not be included in the spending bill, and a coalition of 24 human rights and privacy advocates led by the American Civil Liberties Union condemned the bill. However, as the EFF noted, the bill was never reviewed or marked up by any committee in the House or the Senate before being put to a vote. Instead of being given time to debate the nuances of the bill, lawmakers voted on the bill as part of the trillion-dollar spending bill.

The EFF and the American Civil Liberties Union have both come out against the CLOUD ACT, with the EFF stating that the bill will give U.S. and foreign law enforcement “new mechanisms to seize data across the globe.” Neema Singh Guliani, legislative counsel with the ACLU, wrote in an op-ed for The Hill that the bill “would allow countries to wiretap on U.S. soil for the first time, including conversations that foreign targets may have with people in the U.S., without complying with Wiretap Act requirements.”

This includes private emails, instant messages, Facebook, Google, Snapchat, and any other communications or photos individuals have shared on the internet. The CLOUD Act will also allow foreign nations to access personal data that is stored on servers in the United States without approval by a judge. Finally, the bill grants the U.S. president the authority to sign “executive agreements” which give foreign agents access to data in the U.S., regardless of U.S. privacy laws.

The EFF outlined how the bill might work in real time:

London investigators want the private Slack messages of a Londoner they suspect of bank fraud. The London police could go directly to Slack, a U.S. company, to request and collect those messages. The London police would not necessarily need prior judicial review for this request. The London police would not be required to notify U.S. law enforcement about this request. The London police would not need a probable cause warrant for this collection. Predictably, in this request, the London police might also collect Slack messages written by U.S. persons communicating with the Londoner suspected of bank fraud. Those messages could be read, stored, and potentially shared, all without the U.S. person knowing about it. Those messages, if shared with U.S. law enforcement, could be used to criminally charge the U.S. person in a U.S. court, even though a warrant was never issued.

What are the implications for digital privacy and security? How might the CLOUD Act impact privacy protections guaranteed by the 4th Amendment?

Civil Liberties, Featured, Privacy

Federal Judge Pushes To Revive Fight Against NSA Surveillance

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A federal judge expressed interest in advancing a lawsuit that challenges the constitutionality of the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance program.

U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon laid out a strategy on Wednesday after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit lifted his December 2013 injunction blocking the NSA program on Friday.

[RELATED: Federal Court Rules To Uphold Bulk Spying]

The NSA’s massive surveillance program, which collects Americans’ phone records, was ruled illegal in May by a federal appeals court, on the basis that the NSA’s broad collection “exceeds the scope of what Congress has authorized.”

During a hearing on Wednesday, Leon encouraged conservative lawyer Larry Klayman, who initially brought the suit against the NSA, to amend his case to include customers of Verizon Business Network Services as well as ask a federal appeals court to dismiss an appeal on the case. Leon also noted the past ruling in which the appeals court found the NSA’s program illegal.

[quote_center]“This court has ruled. This court believes that tens of millions of Americans’ constitutional rights have been — and are being — violated,” Leon said. “If the court finds jurisdiction, I don’t have to write another opinion on the merits… It is written.”[/quote_center]

Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which was used to justify the NSA’s data collection, expired on June 1, and after debate as to whether the U.S. government should have any kind of surveillance program collecting data from innocent Americans, it was replaced by the USA Freedom Act.

Although the USA Freedom Act was presented as a law that would end the NSA’s data collection by putting bulk records into the hands of telephone companies, the Department of Justice filed a request asking the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to continue the NSA’s collection for six months.

[RELATED: DoJ Asks Surveillance Court To Ignore Federal Court’s Ruling On Illegal NSA Spying]

The FISA Court approved the federal government’s request on June 29, reauthorizing NSA data collection through Nov. 29, 2015.

The upcoming due date is one that Leon mentioned during the hearing. He told Klayman that it is critical to move now due to the limited time window between now and November.

“The clock is running and there isn’t much time between now and November 29,” Leon said. “This court believes there are millions and millions of Americans whose constitutional rights have been and are being violated, but the window for action is very small – it’s time to move.”

Civil Liberties, Editor’s Pick, Featured, Government Accountability, Government Corruption, Politics, Privacy, Technology, US

DoJ Asks Surveillance Court To Ignore Federal Court’s Ruling On Illegal NSA Spying

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Hours after President Obama signed the USA Freedom Act, which would continue the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance program, while transferring its bulk data collection to private phone companies, the Department of Justice filed a request asking a FISA court to continue the NSA’s collection for six months.

The request, which was filed with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on June 2, asked the Court to “approve the Government’s application for the bulk production of call detail records for a 180 day transition period,” claiming that this request is appropriate, despite the fact that on May 7, a federal appeals court ruled that NSA spying is illegal.

In the request, which was written by Justice Department national security chief John Carlin, the USA Freedom Act’s six-month “orderly transition” clause is referenced, but Carlin does not address whether the clause still applies now that the program was supposed to have shut down completely at midnight on May 31.

The NSA’s mass surveillance program, which was allowed under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, became illegal at 12:01 a.m. on June 1, when the section expired. GOP Presidential candidate and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) led the campaign to block a direct extension of Section 215, and took to the floor of the Senate for 10 hours and 30 minutes to speak out against NSA spying.

The Guardian noted that Carlin also suggests that the Obama Administration “may not necessarily comply with any potential court order demanding that the collection stop,” and might “seek to challenge the injunction.”

“In the event an injunction of some sort were to issue by the district court,the Government would need to assess, in light of the nature and scope of whatever injunction the district court issued, its ability to carry out authority granted under an order issued by this Court,” Carlin wrote.

A report from the Washington Post in Jan. 2014  found that after analyzing 225 terrorism cases inside the United States, the NSA’s bulk collection of phone records “has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism.” 

In the request, Carlin claimed that although the DoJ has considered the Federal court’s ruling on NSA spying in its evaluation of the government’s application, “Second Circuit rulings do not constitute controlling precedent for this Court,” and they are requesting that the NSA’s bulk data collection program continue, even though the majority of the data collected “ultimately will not be terrorist-related.”

Editor’s Pick, Featured, Government Accountability, Politics, Technology, US

USA Freedom Act Passes Congress, Rep. Amash says It Will NOT End Bulk Data Collection

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The USA Freedom Act has passed the United States House of Representatives overwhelmingly with 338 votes in favor and 88 against.  It now moves to the U.S. Senate.

Congressman Justin Amash, who has the strongest voting record in Congress on Constitutional issues, was one of the 88 votes against the “Freedom Act.”  On his Facebook page, Amash explains why he voted the way he did.  In part, he writes:

The bill’s sponsors, and unfortunately some outside advocacy groups, wrongly claim that H.R. 2048 ends “bulk” collection. It’s true that the bill ends the phone dragnet as we currently know it—by having the phone companies themselves hold, search, and analyze certain data at the request of the government, which is worse in many ways given the broader set of data the companies hold—but H.R. 2048 actually expands the statutory basis for the large-scale collection of most data.

H.R. 2048 does this by authorizing the government to order the production of records based upon a “specific selection term” (i.e., like a search term used in a search engine). The records sought still must be relevant to an investigation, so it’s possible the court’s ruling will continue to restrain the government in some fashion. But it’s more likely a court looking at H.R. 2048’s language will see the “specific selection term” as defining the outer limits of what Congress considers acceptably “relevant” under Section 215.- Rep. Justin Amash (R) MI

Proponents of the bill say that under the USA Freedom Act, the NSA would be prohibited from collecting telephone metadata under the Patriot Act. Instead, the agency would have to acquire a warrant every time it wanted to access phone records, which would be held by telephone companies. Officials would need to submit data requests via keywords in order to collect relevant data from companies.

The bill would also reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court) by setting up a five-person panel that would offer advise when intelligence agencies are seeking new interpretations of existing law. Some court rulings would need to be declassified.

International, Politics, Privacy, Technology, US

Report: DEA Collected Americans’ Phone Records Years Before NSA’s Collection Began

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A report released on Tuesday revealed that several years before the National Security Agency began recording Americans’ phone calls, the Drug Enforcement Administration had its own program that began recording calls in 1992.

The report, which was first released by USA Today, found that the DEA’s operation began in 1992, acted as a blueprint for the NSA’s massive data collection program, and was the government’s “first known effort to gather data on Americans in bulk, sweeping up records of telephone calls made by millions of U.S. citizens regardless of whether they were suspected of a crime.”

As previously reported, the existence of the DEA’s program was first revealed in January. However, the full scope of the program was not exposed at the time. USA Today noted that while its report gives insight into the program, there are parts of it that still remain classified.

Officials involved with the operation told USA Today that for more than two decades, the Justice Department and the DEA “amassed logs of virtually all telephone calls from the USA to as many as 116 countries linked to drug trafficking,” with target countries including Canada, Mexico and most of Central and South America.

In a letter from the Justice Department to Sprint in 1998, obtained by USA Today, the department asked the phone company to turn over its call records, and called the DEA’s data collection “one of the most important and effective Federal drug law enforcement initiatives,” which had been “approved at the highest levels of Federal law enforcement authority,” according to Mary Lee Warren, the head of the department’s Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Section.

According to the report, DEA agents did not intercept the content of the phone calls, but they did obtain which numbers were called and when, and they then linked those numbers to an electronic collection of investigative reports, domestic call records and foreign intelligence data.

USA Today reported that although the NSA’s program is still in place, Attorney General Eric Holder halted the DEA’s program in Sept. 2013, after Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA was collecting call records and data from innocent Americans. The report claims that the DEA now sends subpoenas to phone companies, in order to obtain international calling records, and that they sometimes request “a thousand or more numbers a day.”

Government Accountability, Privacy, Technology

Report Exposes CIA’s Attempts to Hack Apple Devices

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A report released on Tuesday by The Intercept asserted that researchers within the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have been engaged in a “multi-year, sustained effort” to sabotage the security of Apple’s iPhones and iPads, using a variety of methods including creating dummy software targeted towards developers and attempting to crack Apple’s encryption keys. The Intercept based its report on documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

According to The Intercept, the researchers discussed ways to exploit security flaws of the devices at a secret annual meeting called the Trusted Computing Base Jamboree. It is claimed that the researchers created a modified version of Xcode, Apple’s development software that is used to create apps. The modified version of Xcode would let the CIA, NSA and other agencies to access apps created by developers using the modified software:

“The researchers boasted that they had discovered a way to manipulate Xcode so that it could serve as a conduit for infecting and extracting private data from devices on which users had installed apps that were built with the poisoned Xcode. In other words, by manipulating Xcode, the spies could compromise the devices and private data of anyone with apps made by a poisoned developer — potentially millions of people.”

The Intercept reported that the researchers had also made efforts to utilize keylogging software, which would record every stroke typed by a user affected by the software.

The documents provided by Snowden do not specify that the CIA’s efforts to break into Apple devices have been successful. The CIA and NSA have not yet responded to The Intercept’s report.

“Spies gonna spy,” Steven Bellovin, a former U.S. Federal Trade Commission chief technologist who is now a professor at Columbia University, told The Intercept. “I’m never surprised by what intelligence agencies do to get information. They’re going to go where the info is, and as it moves, they’ll adjust their tactics. Their attitude is basically amoral: whatever works is OK.”

According to The Intercept, government agencies have desired the continuous ability to “bypass security tools built into wireless devices.” Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, made a pledge last year to protect the privacy of Apple users, especially from all government agencies. On Apple’s website, Cook wrote that “I want to be absolutely clear that we have never worked with any government agency from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services. We have also never allowed access to our servers. And we never will.”

Apple declined to respond to the report from The Intercept, and instead referred the publication to the company’s previous privacy statements.

Election, Politics, Technology, US

Jeb Bush Supports NSA Surveillance Program to “Keep Us Safe”

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Jeb Bush, former Governor of Florida and rumored 2016 GOP Presidential candidate, defended the National Security Agency’s massive surveillance program on Wednesday, calling it “hugely important” in the United States’ long-term battle against terrorism.

Bush addressed the surveillance program, which was enacted during the presidency of his brother George W. Bush, during a speech at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

“For the life of me, I don’t understand – the debate has gotten off track, where we’re not understanding and protecting,” said Bush.  “We do protect our civil liberties, but this is a hugely important program to use these technologies to keep us safe.”

While trying to set himself apart from his brother, with comments such as “I am my own man, and my views are shaped by my own thinking and my own experiences” and “new circumstances require new approaches,” Jeb Bush towed the same line of thought regarding the NSA’s data collect and the “war on terror.”

“We must be prepared for a long-term commitment to fight this battle,” said Bush. “That requires responsible intelligence gathering and analysis, including the NSA metadata program, which contributes to awareness of potential terror cells and interdiction efforts on a global scale.”

Bush added that while the U.S. can respond to terrorist attacks “on many levels,” he feels the NSA’s surveillance program helps to prevent them. “The threats of the twenty-first century will not be the same as the threats of the twentieth and it is critical that we adapt to this change,” Bush said.

The Guardian noted that Bush’s stance on the program differed from Kentucky senator Rand Paul, another rumored 2016 GOP Presidential candidate. In March 2014, Reuters reported that Paul condemned the U.S. government’s massive surveillance program during a speech to students at the University of California, Berkeley.

“I’m not here to tell you what to be. I am here to tell you, though, that your rights, especially your right to privacy, are under assault,” said Paul. “I believe what you do on your cellphone is none of their damn business.“

Politics, Technology, US

Dropbox Fights New NSA Data Grab

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On Thursday, approximately 1,500 pages of court documents were released, which showed how federal officials had forced American technology companies to partake in the PRISM program run by the National Security Agency.

The Washington Post reported that the United States government had “threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 a day in 2008 if it failed to comply with a broad demand to hand over user communications.”

Although Yahoo fought back against the government’s demands, arguing that they were unconstitutional, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review ruled against the company.

In addition to the revelation from the government’s involvement with Yahoo, the company Dropbox released a transparency report on Thursday, which revealed that from January to June 2014, it received 268 requests for user information from law enforcement agencies.

According to The Guardian, those requests “translated into the company handing over content 103 times.” The company also surrendered “non-content” 80 times, which it describes as “subscriber information such as the name and email address associated with the account; the date of account creation and other transactional information like IP addresses.”

Dropbox’s legal counsel, Bart Volkmer, insisted that, although the number of requests is “small compared to our 300 million users,” the company treats all requests the same.

“We treat all the requests we receive seriously and scrutinize them to make sure they satisfy legal requirements before complying,” said Volkmer. “We also push back in cases where agencies are seeking too much information or haven’t followed the proper procedures.”

Yahoo’s loss resulted in the company being one of the first technology companies to give information to PRISM. Due to the vast amount of data obtained by the NSA from Yahoo, it both fostered the PRISM program, and convinced other major companies, such as Google, Apple, and Facebook, to also give in to the NSA’s demands.

According to the Washington Post, a version of the court ruling had been released in 2009, but was so “heavily redacted that observers were unable to discern which company was involved, what the stakes were and how the court had wrestled with many of the issues involved.”

In a post from Yahoo, the company’s general counsel, Ron Bell, insisted that the recently released documents emphasize how the company “had to fight every step of the way to challenge the U.S. Government’s surveillance efforts.”

“Our fight continues,” wrote Bell, who went on to say that although many documents have been released, Yahoo is “still pushing for the FISC to release materials from the 2007-2008 case in the lower court.”

International, Technology, US

Latest Snowden leak claims most information gathered “useless”

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The most recent batch of leaked files from Edward Snowden shows the NSA has collected data on far more ordinary citizens, American and non-American alike, than those the NSA would consider dangerous.

Of all the files retained, The Washington Post describes the majority of them as being “useless by the analysts,” and telling stories of “love and heartbreak, illicit sexual liaisons, mental-health crises, political and religious conversions, financial anxieties and disappointed hopes.”

A majority of the collected files, some 65,000, were “minimized” to protect the identities of citizens, but some 900 email addresses were left unchanged and could be used to identify citizens.

This same article from The Post continues by describing one way the NSA has violated the rights of all American citizens.  The NSA collected, as the article says, “medical records,” which under the Health Information Privacy and Security Act of 2007, are protected as private information and require any entity which houses, uses, or accesses private medical information to notify the citizen of whom the medical information refers.

One disturbing fact gathered from the leak shows the NSA analysts need only to have a “reasonable belief” the person they are collecting data from is foreign.  This means if an email or chat is in a language other than English, the analyst can begin to collect their data.

One analyst even claims data collection would not just take place on the person writing in the foreign language, but on those including in the original targets “buddy list” as it was assumed they were foreign nationals also.

Collection on such a mass scale also offers a view into how the FISA Amendments changed data collection methods.  These amendments gave the NSA authorization to collect data on all but four foreign countries in the world, which civil liberties groups claim to be far-retching.

Featured, Technology, US

Congressman: President’s Push To End Data Collection, Will Actually Increase Collection

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Just by reading the name, the average American would believe that a new bill being crafted by the Obama administration to end NSA data collection, or a simultaneous effort being pushed through the House Intelligence Committee by Rep. Mike Rogers would lead to the end of data collection on hundreds of millions of Americans.  After all, these bills with names like “End Bulk Collection Act” sound like they will free the American people from NSA spying.

Newspaper, television and internet story headlines read “ White House plan would end NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone data”.  Sounds like the NSA spying program is coming to an end.

Not so, says Michigan Congressman Justin Amash who voted against the House version of the “End Bulk Collection” bill.  Amash, a Republican two term Congressman, was a guest on the Ben Swann Radio Show Wednesday.  He says the bill sounds like it will lead to the end of data collection but when you get into the details, the bill could actually expand collection.

“It actually expands the scope of collection, of unconstitutional collection.  It is called the “End Bulk Collection Act.”  It is like we are in some dystopian future where government calls a bill something that has the opposite affect of what title is.” says Rep. Amash.

The major point brought up by the Congressman is that despite the name “End Bulk Collection”, the bill does not to end collection of data, rather it shifts the responsibility of collection from the NSA to private phone companies.

“They are going to transfer where the phone data is collected so that it is not stored by the government but it is instead stored by the phone companies. Where it is stored is not really the main problem.”

Congressman Amash goes on to say that by correcting “who” is storing the information does not to resolve the constitutionality of bulk collection of data.

“The problem is the unconstitutional search and seizure of people’s information.  Even if it is stored about the phone companies, the phone companies are now acting as agents of the government and provide the government even more information than they have today.  That doesn’t put us in a better position, it puts us in a worse position.”

So how is it that the American public has no clue that the “End Bulk Collection Act” or the President’s new proposal would actually increase bulk collection?  Rep. Amash says you can blame that, in part, on a complacent media.

“Last night I saw all these headlines about how the President and the Intelligence Committee were going to end the bulk collection of data as though they are resolving the problem.  But the fact is they are not resolving the problem.  I would love to hear more about the President’s plan, maybe there are some good points to it.  But overall, when you look at the two proposals either from the President or from the Intelligence Committee, they sound like they’re not moving us in the right direction and they are not doing what the American people want which is to protect their privacy under the 4th amendment.”