Glad to hear:
http://techcrunch.com/...
Two senators who scolded the intelligence community for failing to provide a sufficient transparency report are taking their complaints to the White House.
Senators Al Franken and Dean Heller asked President Barack Obama “to support stronger transparency provisions” in a letter Tuesday. The bipartisan pair urged Obama to endorse their proposed additions to the USA FREEDOM Act that would require the intelligence community to disclose estimates of how many people had their information collected, and how many of those people were Americans.
Currently the FREEDOM Act, which has passed through the House but not the Senate, only requires the government to disclose the number of “targets” implicated in surveillance orders. The government’s definition of target is very vague, as noted in our original coverage of the Director of National Intelligence’s first transparency report.
In short, a “target” can be anything from an individual person to an organization composed of millions of individuals. Therefore we have no idea how many people that actually is. Franken said yesterday the report is a “far cry from the kind of transparency that the American people demand and deserve.” - Tech Crunch, 7/1/14
Here's a little more info:
http://www.cnet.com/...
"We support your decision to end bulk collection of Americans' phone call records, along with prohibiting bulk collection under several other authorities," Franken and Heller wrote in the letter. "We fear that unless stronger transparency provisions are included in the USA Freedom Act, the American public will have no way to know if the government is following through on that decision...When foreign intelligence powers are used to collect the information of American citizens, Americans deserve to know it."
The Freedom Act was designed to curb powers granted to the National Security Agency under the Patriot Act -- including the NSA's bulk collection of American's phone records. The House version of the bill passed on May 22, but many technology companies and privacy advocates pulled their support of the bill after several provisions were watered down. A coalition of major technology companies -- including Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, LinkedIn, AOL, and Dropbox -- urged the Senate earlier this month to muster up a stronger version of the USA Freedom Act.
In their letter, Franken and Heller asked the president to "publicly and formally" support improvements to the Freedom Act that would require the government to release annual estimates of how many Americans had their information collected and reviewed under each surveillance law; allow companies to provide detailed information about government data requests in a timely manner; and eliminate language that allows disclosures only in terms of "targets" instead of total individuals affected.
While the reform bill works its way through the Senate, the NSA's surveillance programs continue to operate. On June 27, the Department of Justice disclosed that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court renewed an order allowing the NSA to continue its bulk collection of Americans' phone metadata. That court order, which must be renewed every 90 days, expires on September 12. - CNET, 7/1/14
Here's what prompted them to speak out:
http://thehill.com/...
Two senators are criticizing a government report released last week that said U.S. agencies spied on tens of thousands of Internet users around the world, arguing the disclosures still leave Americans "in the dark."
“The administration’s report is a far cry from the kind of transparency that the American people demand and deserve,” Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) said in a statement Monday.
Franken and Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) criticized the report for failing to provide information about the total number of people affected by controversial surveillance programs and how many of those people are U.S. citizens.
The report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — promised in August and released Friday — was the intelligence community’s first transparency report discussing the uses of foreign intelligence surveillance authorities.
According to the report, U.S. intelligence agencies used their authority under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to target the electronic communications of more than 80,000 foreign people, groups or organizations.
The report did not specify to what extent U.S. communications were swept up in Section 702 collection.
On the National Security Agency’s controversial phone data collection program, the agency used 423 “selectors” to search the massive database, including 248 selectors pertaining to U.S. persons.
These disclosures are not enough, Franken and Heller — co-sponsors of a Senate bill that would increase government reporting requirements around surveillance programs — said Monday.
“I recognize that this report is being offered in good faith. But it still leaves Americans in the dark,” Franken said. - The Hill, 6/30/14
Here's some more info:
http://techcrunch.com/...
The view of Senator Heller, that the report is progress, but not nearly enough, is roughly what I’m hearing from the private sector, as well. Here’s the Senator himself:
The report released by the Administration represents some progress, but it does not do near enough to provide Americans with adequate information. The American people deserve greater transparency and American companies should be able to disclose more information when it comes to privacy rights and the federal government’s surveillance activities.
His statement goes on to indicate support for the Surveillance Transparency Act (STA) of 2013, which he and Senator Franken introduced.
Senator Franken had similar comments, saying that the report is a “far cry from the kind of transparency that the American people demand and deserve.” The senator continues, stating that the report “still leaves Americans in the dark,” and that it “doesn’t tell the American people enough about what information is being gathered about them and how it’s being used.”
The STA would force more disclosure. It hasn’t seen much motion inside of Congress. The ever-wrong-but-still-funny GovTrack.us ‘Prognosis’ tracker gives it a 1 percent chance of passing. There was some overlap between the STA and the USA FREEDOM Act. As The Hill also notes regarding the the crossover, “some transparency provisions were dropped from the House version.” - Tech Crunch, 6/30/14
If you'd like to get more information, please do contact Senators Franken and Heller:
Franken: (202) 224-5641
http://www.franken.senate.gov/...
Heller: (202) 224-6244
http://www.heller.senate.gov/...
More reasons we need to keep Franken in the Senate. Click here to donate and get involved with his campaign:
http://www.alfranken.com/