Schweikert co-sponsors bipartisan privacy bill

Arizona Representative David Schweikert continued the fight to protect the privacy rights of the American people by becoming a leading co-sponsor of H.R. 3361, the USA FREEDOM (Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet Collection, and Online Monitoring) Act – a bipartisan and bicameral bill to end intrusive data collecting activities by the National Security Administration (NSA).

Schweikert is the first member of the Arizona Delegation to be an original co-sponsor of this effort to curb inappropriate intelligence gathering of private American citizens’ communications and to protect and defend their civil liberties.

“Every week, new revelations are exposed detailing how the NSA and other intelligence agency personnel misled Congress and the American people about their invasive actions that have violated fundamental principles of privacy,” said Rep. Schweikert.

We have a responsibility to hold Washington accountable for these egregious violations of individual privacy rights and to put in place vigorous oversight mechanisms to ensure the highest degree of transparency and accountability so government over-reach, like what the NSA has done, never happens again.”

The USA FREEDOM Act includes provisions that:

Ends the bulk metadata collection: Intelligence agencies will now be required to show a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) judge that they are seeking communications records relevant to either an agent of a foreign power who is the subject of a terrorism investigation or someone with a link to that agent. The bill will also require the government to more aggressively filter and discard information about Americans accidentally collected through surveillance programs.

Reforms the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC): The bill creates new and more robust reporting requirements to ensure that Congress and the American people are aware of actions by the FISC and intelligence community as a whole.

Increases transparency: The FISC will be required to publicly explain and disclose all FISC decisions issued after July 10, 2003 that contain a significant construction or interpretation of the law. Public companies will now be permitted to report an estimate of the number of FISA orders and national security letters received and complied with – and the number of users or accounts that were subject to FISA orders.

According to the Wisconsin Daily Independent, the USA Freedom Act has over 100 cosponsors in the House and Senate, and dozens of supporters including the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Rifle Association, the Project on Government Oversight and several technology companies including Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Facebook, AOL, Google, LinkedIn and Mozilla.

In a press release, Mozilla called The Freedom Act “an important step toward rebuilding user trust by adding limitations on government collection of data in the name of national security. The idea is simple. The NSA should not have a blank check to access user data from technology companies.”

“Transparency is a critical first step to an informed public debate, but it is clear that more needs to be done. Our companies believe that government surveillance practices should also be reformed to include substantial enhancements for privacy protections and appropriate oversight and accountability mechanisms for those programs.” said Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Facebook, AOL, Google, and LinkedIn in a letter.

The New York Times asked in an editorial, “Is it really better for us to think that things have gone so far with the post-9/11 idea that any spying that can be done should be done and that nobody thought to inform President Obama about tapping the phone of one of the most important American allies?”