Conservatives Push For Changes To Patriot Act Data Provisions As Expiration Draws Near

[Panich52]

Wow. Rank & file conservs don't like Cheney/Bush spy apparatus, only 'leaders' like it. How many Repub parties are there?

National Memo

WASHINGTON — With key provisions of the Patriot Act set to expire on June first, conservative advocacy groups are telling Republican lawmakers they should make significant changes to the government’s authority to collect data about Americans.

The groups feel emboldened because of a vote the House took last June on an amendment to the annual Defense Department appropriations bill. It would have barred the National Security Agency from sweeping up Americans’ emails, Web browsing data and online chats without a warrant. The amendment was adopted 293-123 with a majority of members from both parties in support.

. ...
The difficulty in convincing Congress to make changes to the program is getting party leaders to go along. Leaders ultimately removed the amendment, sponsored by Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie and California Democrat Zoe Lofgren, when the defense bill was wrapped into omnibus spending legislation in December.

“They’re going to say, ‘Pass this or people are going to die,’ ” Patrick Eddington, a policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, said at a recent briefing for congressional staffers, referring to party leaders opposed to overhauling the law. Eddington urged the aides to go to their bosses and advise them to begin making the case to leaders for limits on the surveillance programs.

Conservative advocates at the briefing said they want Congress to ban mass surveillance of Americans without a warrant, destroy previously collected data about them, and subject the government’s surveillance programs to regular audits. They said if Congress reauthorizes the expiring Patriot Act (PL 107-56) provisions, it also should bar the government from mandating that technology companies add “back doors” to their encryption products that allow the government access. Lawmakers also should increase protections for whistleblowers to avert future incidents such as that involving Snowden, they said.

The expiring Patriot Act provisions allow the government to collect personal information on people it says are the subject of a terrorism investigation and to track their communications, the underpinnings for the NSA surveillance program.

To make their case, they went beyond the typical civil liberties arguments against warrantless surveillance. Most prominent was the claim that the government’s surveillance programs hurt the American economy by prompting companies seeking to protect their data to store it with European data storage providers.

More
http://www.nationalmemo.com/conservatives-push-for-changes-to-patriot-act-data-provisions-as-expiration-draws-near/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=MM_frequency_six&utm_campaign=Morning%20Memo%20-%202015-04-15

[NoJusticeNoPeace]

1. The "act for idiots" should not be renewed in any form

and should be eliminated and never spoken of again

[Cayenne]

2. Nobody want NSA backdoors

US tech companies are increasingly disfavored because of concerns of having NSA backdoors built in.