Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks USA Freedom Act does not do enough to reform the dragnet.
A transpartisan coalition of people and organizations — including whistleblowers Bill Binney, Thomas Drake, Dan Ellsberg, Mark Klein, Ed Loomis and Kirk Wiebe — just released a letter calling out the problems with the bill. The letter starts,
We, the undersigned civil liberties advocates, organizations, and whistleblowers, are alarmed that Senator Leahy’s recently introduced bill, the USA FREEDOM Act (S. 2685), legalizes currently illegal surveillance activities, grants immunity to corporations that collaborate to violate privacy rights, reauthorizes the PATRIOT Act for an additional 2.5 years, and fails to reform EO 12333 or Section 702, other authorities used to collect large amounts of information on Americans. For these reasons, we encourage both the House and the Senate to oppose this legislation in its current form.
I hope reform supporters in Congress take this call for more meaningful reform seriously!