Congress Moves Toward Meaningful Reform of Domestic Surveillance

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http://www.thenation.com/blog/175401/congress-moves-toward-meaningful-reform-domestic-surveillance#axzz2ZsHf6btR


Senator Ron Wyden speaks at the Center for American Progress on Tuesday, July 22, 2013. Photo courtesy Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Senator Ron Wyden’s speech at the Center for American Progress on Tuesday morning was a pivotal moment in the emerging debate over domestic surveillance—the senator, who was one of the first to warn the public that the government was interpreting the Patriot Act in a “shocking” fashion, issued yet another important warning.

Without immediate action to address an ever-expanding surveillance state, the country risks entrenching an apparatus that “cannot be reversed,” he said.

The Patriot Act and the subsequent expansion of its authority by both Congress and the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has led to “the creation of an always-expanding, omnipresent surveillance state that, hour by hour, chips needlessly away at the liberties and freedoms our founders established for us, without the benefit of actually making us any safer,” he said.

“So, today I’m going to deliver another warning: If we do not seize this unique moment in our constitutional history to reform our surveillance laws and practices, we will all live to regret it,” Wyden continued. “The combination of increasingly advanced technology with a breakdown in the checks and balances that limit government action could lead us to a surveillance state that cannot be reversed.”



Read more: Congress Moves Toward Meaningful Reform of Domestic Surveillance | The Nation http://www.thenation.com/blog/175401/congress-moves-toward-meaningful-reform-domestic-surveillance#ixzz2ZuAmdLqF
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***we'll see. i have a good deal less confidence that the IIC{information industrial complex} can reined in easily.