Here's Your Reform. With Bipartisan Approval!

This week was undoubtedly a turning point in the NSA debate [...S]ome of the NSA's most ardent defenders, including the House Intelligence Committee and the White House, suddenly released similar proposals endorsing the end of the NSA's bulk collection of phone records as we know it.

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[B]ut if you read between the legislative lines, the government might not be curtailing mass surveillance so much as permanently entrenching it in American law.

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While the Obama plan is undoubtedly more promising [than the Intelligence Committee bill], with court requests and much more, Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union has several important questions about the proposal that need to be answered before anyone will really be able to judge. And the Cato Institute's Julian Sanchez detailed why neither of these proposals are as good as the USA Freedom Act, which may now be getting boxed out.

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To be sure, neither of the two new proposals would actually "end mass surveillance", as this National Journal headline proclaimed, or even "end bulk collection" entirely, as most of the other reports suggest.

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[A] large majority of the House bill focuses on new ways for the government to collect data from "electronic communications service providers" – also known as the internet companies.

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According to the first report in the New York Times on Monday, the NSA would only be allowed to search phone records under the Obama proposal if the agency could prove a reasonable suspicion to terrorism. By the end of the week, the White House’s "fact sheet" said the NSA would be able to search "within two hops" of phone records – that's potentially tens of thousands of people – based on a phrase that should send chills down the spine of every journalist who has ever had a source the government may not like: "national security concerns".

  The Guardian

Sounds like fishing to me.

And what about all the reforms left out of both proposals? Like preventing "backdoor" warrantless searches on Americans. Like stopping the NSA from undermining common encryption used by everyone. Like leaving bulk collection for the rest of the world's citizens untouched.

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The White House, after dragging its feet for months, now is imploring quick action by Congress.

It’s probably not necessary to say, but it’s a good idea to be wary of anything they want pushed through quickly.

We'd do well to remember a more recent time in which Congress took up NSA wrongdoing, during the first warrantless wiretapping scandal of the Bush years.

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Congress responded with outrage and public hearings, but when it came to passing actual new laws, there was no sweeping reform – there was sweeping under the rug: Congress legalized much of the Bush administration's illegal practices with the FISA Amendments Act (now Obama's justification for PRISM and upstream surveillance), and killed lawsuits against the telecommunications companies like AT&T by giving them retroactive immunity

That, too.

Maybe it's time we heed the warning of the late George Carlin: "'Bipartisan' usually means that a larger-than-usual deception is being carried out."

And I wouldn't be surprised if Obama threw out his plan just to make the Republicans approve the worse congressional bill, which he'll sign in the interest of "cooperation".

Additional:

So, after nine months of ignoring the Snowden revelations, downplaying the the Snowden revelations, not telling the truth about the Snowden revelations, insulting the Snowden revelations, sending members of his administration to lie to Congress about the Snowden revelations and claiming everything the NSA does is legal, righteous and necessary to keep the barbarians outside the gates, Obama is coincidentally now proposing some “reforms” without acknowledging the Snowden revelations. Let’s have a look based on what we know right now.

  Ghosts of Tom Joad

That article lays out the inadequate, misleading Obama proposal and what's missing from it.