(The AEGIS Alliance) – FISA’s Section 702, that the NSA has been making use of for warrant-less surveillance of the internet communication of Americans, has now been renewed, it passed with a 65-34 Senate vote on Thursday which followed up a similar passage in the House just last week, and moved to the White House for President Trump to sign, likely to happen today on Friday, the 19th of January in the year 2018.
This surveillance scheme is controversial and was able to pass nearly the same as it had been previously written, without serious reforms being made into the final bill. One minor provision which requires warrants related to ongoing crimes has been added, although for Americans not involved in criminal actions, warrant-less surveillance will remain to be a normal thing.
Speaking technically, the NSA is not considered to be eavesdropping onto Americans directly, but rather eavesdropping onto the entire planet Earth, and then, incidentally having captured the communications of Americans, is allowed to search through them without issuing a warrant.
Congressional leadership has mainly shrugged off callings for reform on grounds of the interest of national security, along with complaints about the system having been built to abuse have been largely forgotten in efforts for its renewal before the previous version was expired.
Kyle James Lee – The AEGIS Alliance – This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
