Senate passes bill to extend key surveillance program, sending it to Trump's desk
Source: Washington Post
The Senate passed a bill on Thursday to reauthorize a powerful government authority to conduct foreign surveillance on U.S. soil, sending the president a six-year extension of the program just one day before a statutory deadline.
The 65-to-34 vote on the legislation, which the president is expected to sign into law, marks the end of a months-long debate that exposed sharp divisions between privacy advocates and national security hawks in Congress. Lawmakers have struggled over whether to limit the spy authority the intelligence community has identified as one of its most important surveillance tools.
The program, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, allows the National Security Agency to collect from U.S. companies the emails and other communication of foreign targets located overseas. But federal law enforcement agents can scour the database for information about Americans who have been in touch with those foreign targets, and many lawmakers wanted to force the government to obtain a warrant before doing so.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/senate-passes-bill-to-extend-key-surveillance-program-sending-it-to-trumps-desk/2018/01/18/3f8d5036-fc71-11e7-8f66-2df0b94bb98a_story.html
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These 18 Senate Democrats Just Voted to Hand Trump Mass Spying Powers
"Members of both parties who voted in favor of this legislation should be sharply rebuked for supporting a bill that is in flagrant violation of the rights enshrined in the Constitution."
by
Jake Johnson, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/01/17/these-18-senate-democrats-just-voted-hand-trump-mass-spying-powers
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The 18 Democrats were: Tom Carper (Del.), Bob Casey (Pa.), Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.), Tammy Duckworth (Ill.), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Maggie Hassan (N.H.), Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), Doug Jones (Ala.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Joe Manchin (W.V.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Bill Nelson (Fla.), Gary Peters (Mich.), Jack Reed (R.I.), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Mark Warner (Va.), Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.).
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K&R for exposure
Time to make yet more calls
