As some of you may know, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein from California has introduced a bill called the Fisa Improvements Act that she is portraying as a reasonable reform of mass government surveillance. I’ve been skeptical from the beginning, reading headlines like " Stop the NSA ‘Fake Fix’ Bill " from EFF and others. I’ve read through some of the bill, but here’s a list of reasons why this bill should be dumped that don’t even require reading it.
The author of the Patriot Act is sponsoring a more reasonable bill #
To my surprise, one author of the USA Patriot Act, Jim Sensenbrenner, is proposing a competing bill with the support of Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, called the USA Freedom Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-Collection, and Online Monitoring Act). Here’s a summary of what the bill would bring about, including the elimination of the meta-data collection programs often mentioned in the revelations of Edward Snowden this summer, and a closing of the “backdoor” that allowed the NSA to search for data about Americans in collected data that was obtained with non-individualized warrants.
Silicon Valley is revolting in Feinstein’s backyard #
Several California tech giants like Google, Facebook, Apple, and others have banded together to call for a reform to government surveillance initiatives to restore trust in the Internet. Crucially, they argue against the provisions in Feinstein’s bill that would continue to allow the meta-data collection programs, in favor of the USA Freedom Act mentioned above. If Feinstein is facing a revolt from the very California companies that she’s supposed to represent, there’s clearly something wrong.
Her donors list shows where her loyalties lie #
According to Open Secrets, her biggest donors for the 2009-2014 election cycle include General Atomics, General Dynamics, BAE Systems, and Northrop Grumman, all of which involved in defense contracting. I wouldn’t call it a stretch to say she’s pretty invested in the defense industry, which happens to be the same defense industry the NSA contracts all this mass surveillance work to .
For these reasons, I urge you to write to your Senators to oppose this bill .