To: Rep. Rodney Davis (IL-13)
Rodney Davis: Back Leahy-Sensenbrenner NSA reform bill
Just Foreign Policy
Rep. Rodney Davis: Cosponsor, advocate for, and vote for the bipartisan National Security Agency reform bill introduced in the House by Republican Representative Jim Sensenbrenner and in the Senate by Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy.
Why is this important?
The Leahy-Sensenbrenner NSA reform bill has been endorsed by the ACLU. The Guardian reported: “The legislation introduced today by Senator Leahy and Representative Sensenbrenner is a true reform bill that rejects the false and dangerous notion that privacy and our fundamental freedoms are incompatible with security,” said Michelle Richardson, the ACLU’s surveillance lobbyist.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/29/nsa-surveillance-review-intelligence-chiefs-testify
Sen. Patrick Leahy & Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner wrote in Politico:
"...the dragnet collection of millions of Americans’ phone records every day - whether they have any connection at all to terrorism - goes far beyond what Congress envisioned or intended to authorize...it must stop."
"...Since the revelation that the National Security Agency is collecting the details of Americans’ phone calls on an unprecedented scale, it has come out that the government searches the content of huge troves of emails, collects in bulk the address books from email accounts and social networking sites, at least temporarily collected geolocation data from our cellphones, committed thousands of privacy violations and made substantial misrepresentations to courts and Congress."
"[Our legislation] will put an end to the National Security Agency’s indiscriminate collection of personal information. Our proposal, the USA FREEDOM Act, provides stronger privacy safeguards with respect to a range of government surveillance programs."
"The intelligence community has failed to justify its expansive use of these laws. It is simply not accurate to say that the bulk collection of phone records has prevented dozens of terrorist plots. The most senior NSA officials have acknowledged as much in congressional testimony. We also know that the FISA court has admonished the government for making a series of substantial misrepresentations to the court regarding these programs."
"We hope other lawmakers will join us in our legislative efforts to ensure that such abuses are never repeated and that no false trade-off between freedom and security is allowed to be decided secretly, behind closed doors, ever again."
- "The case for NSA reform"
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/leahy-sensenbrenner-nsa-reform-98953.html