Civil liberties advocates told Congress to pass the...

Civil liberties advocates told Congress to pass the latest Senate version of the USA Freedom Act (S-2685), which they have loudly backed in recent months. Several groups, including the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Libertarian Party, National Lawyers Guild and National Network for Arab American Communities, sent lawmakers a letter Monday. “The passage of the USA FREEDOM Act would be an important first step in curtailing the NSA’s abuses of fundamental constitutional rights, but it would not be enough,” the letter said (http://bit.ly/1t1yuU7). It called for further steps such as overhauling the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Section 702, limiting any “backdoor” surveillance searches and creating a stronger adversarial process in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.