Congress should strengthen provisions in the revised USA...

Congress should strengthen provisions in the revised USA Freedom Act to reflect the legislation as originally introduced last fall, several stakeholders told House leaders in a letter Wednesday. The bill, HR-3361, cleared the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees last week. “While the bill makes significant progress in ending bulk collection, we strongly believe that several technical corrections and clarifications to the bill are required if Congress is to help ensure that the bill language is not misinterpreted and its stated goal of ending bulk collection is met,” the letter said (http://bit.ly/1k5kTo0). Signers include the American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Democracy & Technology, Demand Progress, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Press, the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute and Reddit. The Reform Government Surveillance coalition also signed -- its members are AOL, Apple, Dropbox, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo. The letter points to three items that need deeper modification, changed to reflect the original bill -- overhauling Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Section 702, which authorizes online surveillance; allowing for more “robust” reporting of surveillance orders by industry and government; and creating a special advocate for the FISA court. The letter also recommended that Congress tighten the language of the bill in certain places.