On Monday, the House finalized procedural business on a bill to reauthorize the nation's warrantless surveillance powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which Sen. Ron Wyden called "One of the most dramatic and terrifying expansions of government surveillance authority in history."
"Buried in the Section 702 reauthorization bill passed by the House on Friday is the biggest expansion of domestic surveillance since the Patriot Act. Senator Wyden calls this power" terrifying," and he's right," the thread begins.
Under current law, the government can compel "Electronic communications service providers" that have direct access to communications to assist the NSA in conducting Section 702 surveillance.
Through a seemingly innocuous change to the definition of "Electronic communications surveillance provider," an amendment offered by House intel committee leaders and passed by the House vastly expands the universe of entities that can be compelled to assist the NSA. If the bill becomes law, any company or individual that provides ANY service whatsoever may be forced to assist in NSA surveillance, as long as they have access to equipment on which communications are transmitted or stored-such as routers, servers, cell towers, etc.
So they would be required to give the NSA access to the equipment itself or to use techniques or devices to copy and turn over entire communications streams and/or repositories of stored communications, which would inevitably include vast quantities of wholly domestic communications.
The NSA, having wholesale access to domestic communications on an unprecedented scale, would then be on the "Honor system" to pull out and retain only the communications of approved foreign targets.
The White House will tell senators they have no choice other than to pass the House bill, because Section 702 expires on April 19, and trying to fix the House bill-or pass different legislation-would take too long.
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