Dianne Feinstein Insists NSA’s Massive Snooping Operations Are ‘Not Surveillance’

[Purveyor]

By Paul Lewis, The Guardian
Monday, October 21, 2013 12:21 EDT

Dianne Feinstein, the chair of the US Senate committee charged with holding the intelligence establishment to account, declared on Monday that the National Security Agency’s mass collection of phone records is “not surveillance” and should be maintained as an essential tool to combat terrorism.

Feinstein made the case for retaining the program, which routinely collects and stores the phone records millions of Americans, in an op-ed for USA Today, in which she wrote that the NSA’s work had been “effective in helping to prevent terrorist plots against the US and our allies”.

Feinstein, a Democrat from California, is introducing legislation that would make superficial alterations to the NSA and the secret courts that are supposed to provide judicial oversight.

But her bill stops short of making any substantial changes to the way the agency conducts its work, despite the string of revelations based on disclosures by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

A host of rival bills being introduced in Washington go much further, including one from Democratic senator Patrick Leahy, who chairs the Senate judiciary committee. Leahy is proposing an end to the bulk collection of phone records, which is authorised under an interpretation of section 215 of the Patriot Act.

MORE...

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/10/21/dianne-feinstein-insists-nsas-massive-snooping-operations-are-not-surveillance/

[grasswire]

1. won't California PLEASE retire this profiteer?

It's past time.

[Hutzpa]

2. +10000

She has become immune to profiteering.

[FreakinDJ]

8. GOP doesn't even run against her

Why should they - she already votes Republican on every major issue

[winter is coming]

3. Bull and shit. Take your bulletproof wig and slink home, DiFi. n/t

[Initech]

4. Move along! Nothing to see here!

[DirkGently]

5. She is on the wrong side of this.

[KG]

6. it's only 'Surveillance' if the other guy does it.

[indepat]

7. So if big brother reads all our "papers," at a cost of hundred of billions of dollars,

some terrorist plots will (or might) be foiled, but at the cost of liberty and evisceration of our constitutional protections. My God, it's as if Senator Feinstein had cut her teeth at the Staci and has been eaten up with a perversely totalitarian ideology.

[cui bono]

10. There's no guarantee that any plots will be foiled as evidenced by the Boston bombings.

But I would be willing to guarantee that this will be misused and abused for personal/political gain.

[indepat]

12. Your guarantee is better than money in the bank: it's pure gold

[cui bono]

9. I pretty much no longer care what DiFi thinks.

This plus the journalist bs. Blech.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

11. The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.  H.L. Mencken

[Downtown Hound]

13. As proud as I am of California's recent electoral triumphs

Dianne Feinstein remains a blight on the state.

[WillyT]

14. K & R !!!