New & Improved USA Freedumb Act, with Twice the Contractors Compensated
Somewhere Booz Allen Hamilton Vice Chairman (and former NSA Director) Mike McConnell just said, “Ka-Ching.”
As I noted, the initial manager’s amendment of HR 3361 (AKA USA Freedumb Act) added compensation language to Section 215 that didn’t originally exist.
(j) COMPENSATION.—The Government shall compensate, at the prevailing rate, a person for producing tangible things or providing information, facilities, or assistance in accordance with an order issued or an emergency production required under this section.
In this latest iteration, the compensation has been expanded beyond just the telecoms to anyone else who assists.
(j) COMPENSATION.—The Government shall compensate a person for reasonable expenses incurred for—
(1) producing tangible things or providing information, facilities, or assistance in accordance with an order issued with respect to an application described in subsection (b)(2)(C) or an emergency production under subsection (i) that, to comply with subsection (i)(1)(D), requires an application described in subsection (b)(2)(C); or
(2) otherwise providing technical assistance to the Government under this section or to implement the amendments made to this section by the USA FREEDOM Act.
There’s reason to believe that contractors (AKA Booz!) does some of the triage work on the data currently. So one solution to that problem might be to move those Booz contractors — with their access directly to the raw data of Americans — over to Verizon and AT&T.
Because why shouldn’t NSA contractors be in bed together, wallowing in all your raw data.
Glad to see this bill is improving Intelligence Contractors bottom line, even if it doesn’t improve the dragnet.
Hey, if the Gov’t gets to interpret their secret laws as broadly as they deem fit, We the People get to also.
So, We the Persons shall henceforth define “provide” as the taking of any of our personal information by any entity – private or public – for use in any program real or imagined in the USA Freedumb Act, and shall be compensated at the prevailing rate of One Million Dollars per Megabyte of information “provided”.
Seems fair.
How exactly do they calculate a “prevailing rate” for mercenary info-rape? Are there some market forces heretofore unseen?
“The Government shall compensate, at the prevailing rate, a person for producing tangible things or providing information, facilities, or assistance in accordance with an order issued or an emergency production required under this section.”
emphasis added.
Is this also a backhanded attempt at codifying corporations as persons? Because I thought the SCOTUS ruling in Citizen’s United only defined corporations as persons in reference to freedom of speech???