{"id":119830,"date":"2014-05-21T18:23:52","date_gmt":"2014-05-21T18:23:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=119830"},"modified":"2014-05-21T18:23:52","modified_gmt":"2014-05-21T18:23:52","slug":"end-sight-surveillance-police-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/end-sight-surveillance-police-state\/","title":{"rendered":"No End in Sight for Surveillance Police State"},"content":{"rendered":"<h5>On Tuesday the House of Representatives gutted the so-called\u00a0<a style=\"color: #025ab4;\" href=\"http:\/\/beta.congress.gov\/bill\/113th-congress\/house-bill\/3361\" target=\"_blank\">USA Freedom Act<\/a>\u00a0designed to curb surveillance abuse by the NSA.<\/h5>\n<p>The version that emerged from Rules Committee is substantially different than the version approved by the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees two weeks ago. The watered down and weakened version is the result of the Obama administration leaning on House leaders behind closed doors.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Di78u3ALpv8?rel=0\" width=\"620\" height=\"349\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe USA FREEDOM Act had previously passed through two committees before being secretly watered down behind closed doors,\u201d notes\u00a0<a style=\"color: #025ab4;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.accessnow.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/20\/access-withdraws-conditional-support-for-usa-freedom-act?utm_content=buffer12de2&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter.com&amp;utm_campaign=buffer\" target=\"_blank\">Amie Stepanovich<\/a>, Senior Policy Counsel at Access, a digital rights organization. \u201cThe version we fear could now be negotiated in secret and introduced on the House floor may not move us forward on NSA reform.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBefore this bill becomes law, Congress must make clear \u2014 either through amendments to the bill, through statements in the legislative record, or both \u2014 that mass collection of innocent people\u2019s records isn\u2019t allowed,\u201d the\u00a0<a style=\"color: #025ab4;\" href=\"http:\/\/newamerica.net\/node\/110983\" target=\"_blank\">New America Foundation<\/a>\u00a0writes in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Leadership of the House is demonstrating that it wants to end the debate about surveillance, rather than end bulk collection,\u201d said\u00a0<a style=\"color: #025ab4;\" href=\"https:\/\/cdt.org\/press\/house-leadership-moves-to-gut-usa-freedom-act\/?utm_content=buffer170d0&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter.com&amp;utm_campaign=buffer\" target=\"_blank\">Harley Geiger<\/a>, Senior Counsel at the Center for Democracy &amp; Technology. \u201cAs amended, the bill may not prevent collection of data on a very large scale in a manner that infringes upon the privacy of Americans with no connection to a crime or terrorism. This is quite disappointing given the consensus by the public, Congress, the President, and two independent review groups that ending bulk collection is necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The gutting of the USA Freedom Act was virtually ignored by the establishment media \u2014 and for good reason: the national security state needs all-encompassing surveillance to retain its hold on power.<\/p>\n<p>A document released by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals the real reason the national security state has built and continues to build an unprecedented surveillance grid. \u201cIt revealed that the agency has been monitoring the online activities of individuals it believes express \u2018radical\u2019 ideas and who have a \u2018radicalizing\u2019 influence on others,\u201d writes\u00a0<a style=\"color: #025ab4;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2014\/may\/13\/glenn-greenwald-anonymous-mass-surveillance-governments-nasa-no-place-to-hide\" target=\"_blank\">Glenn Greenwald<\/a>\u00a0for The Guardian.<\/p>\n<p>Because the NSA targets \u201cbroad categories of people,\u201d it is capable and willing to conduct surveillance on \u201canyone anywhere, including in the US, whose ideas the government finds threatening,\u201d Greenwald notes.<\/p>\n<p>Obama and the establishment media routinely criticize the panopticon surveillance state, but such criticism is less than worthless. The Obama administration, as noted above, has worked behind closed doors to make sure any legislation designed to rollback NSA violations of the Constitution and the privacy of the American people is seriously weakened.<\/p>\n<p>Via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.infowars.com\/no-end-in-sight-for-surveillance-police-state\/\" target=\"_blank\">Infowars<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Tuesday the House of Representatives gutted the so-called\u00a0USA Freedom Act\u00a0designed to curb surveillance abuse by the NSA. The version that emerged from Rules Committee is substantially different than the version approved by the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees two weeks ago. The watered down and weakened version is the result of the Obama administration [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-119830","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119830\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}