Free Republic

The Senate voted overwhelmingly to advance the USA Freedom Act Sunday evening, but too late to prevent Sen. Rand Paul from being able to force a short-term expiration of Patriot Act surveillance authorities at midnight. The overwhelming vote Sunday came after Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., threw in the towel on advancing any short-term extensions of the Patriot Act authorities under the continuing objections of Paul, the fellow Kentuckian he has endorsed for the presidency. The Senate voted 77-17, far above the 60-vote threshold to advance the bill. Several more steps are required, however, before a vote on final passage,...

The Senate voted overwhelmingly to advance the USA Freedom Act Sunday evening, but too late to prevent Sen. Rand Paul from being able to force a short-term expiration of Patriot Act surveillance authorities at midnight. The overwhelming vote Sunday came after Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., threw in the towel on advancing any short-term extensions of the Patriot Act authorities under the continuing objections of Paul, the fellow Kentuckian he has endorsed for the presidency. The Senate voted 77-17, far above the 60-vote threshold to advance the bill. Several more steps are required, however, before a vote on final passage,...

Senate advocates for an overhaul of National Security Agency surveillance programs sound confident they have the votes to advance the USA Freedom Act. It’s just a matter of time. “I think we’ll get it passed on Sunday night,” Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., told CNN Saturday, making a bullish prediction on the timing. “Now, by the rules of the Senate, with objections and so forth … the Patriot Act may very well expire Sunday night, but we’ve got to start moving forward here. We could have done this a week ago. And this is the nature of Washington, D.C., is always...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said Saturday that Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul is "wrong" on his efforts to end post-Sept. 11 surveillance laws used against suspected spies and terrorists. Bush, a likely GOP presidential candidate in 2016, called for the reauthorization of the Patriot Act enacted under the presidency of his brother George W. Bush. "What I admire most about my brother was he kept us safe," Jeb Bush said at a Tennessee Republican Party fundraiser. "And I believe people will respect him for a long time because of that." Without action by midnight Sunday, a number of tools...

Americans have watched for years as Washington has steadily drained the states and the people of their autonomy, but the NSA surveillance scandal, such as it is, has proven to be one power grab too many for some. As such, according to Watchdog.org, some state governments are implementing an example that Congress can (and should) follow with regards to limiting electronic surveillance.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said Saturday that Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul is “wrong” on his efforts to end post-Sept. 11 surveillance laws used against suspected spies and terrorists. Bush, a likely GOP presidential candidate in 2016, called for the reauthorization of the Patriot Act enacted under the presidency of his brother George W. Bush. “What I admire most about my brother was he kept us safe,” Jeb Bush said at a Tennessee Republican Party fundraiser. “And I believe people will respect him for a long time because of that.” […] Bush told reporters before the event that he...

Sunday, I will continue my fight to end the illegal collection of American phone records. The Second Appeals court has ruled the NSA’s bulk collection of phone records illegal. We should not be debating modifying an illegal program. We should simply end this illegal program. How will we defend ourselves if the Patriot Act expires? Well, perhaps we could just rely on the Constitution and demonstrate exactly how traditional judicial warrants can gather all the info we need—and how bulk collection really hasn’t worked. We have all the tools we need to preserve both security and liberty. What we now...

An American cyberattack on North Korea half a decade ago was fruitless overall, sources say. The National Security Agency (NSA) led a mission in 2010 to damage North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, Reuters reported on Friday. Operatives tried using a variant of the Stuxnet computer virus deployed against Iran that same year, the news service said, with developers crafting a version that would activate once it reached Korean-language settings on targeted machines. Operatives hoped the virus would disable centrifuges for enriching uranium, much like it had when used against Iran, Reuters said, but the cyberattack stumbled when it encountered North...

More than 10,000 websites blocked users from computers in Congress on Friday, in a demonstration against any possible re-authorization of NSA surveillance powers. “This is a blackout,” read the site to which computers from congressional IP addresses were redirected. “We are blocking your access until you end mass surveillance laws.” “Right now the code affects only visitors from Congress, we’re willing to keep it up,” said Holmes Wilson, a co-founder of Fight for the Future, the group which wrote the code and is leading the online protest. The redirect site also includes semi-nude, sometimes explicit photos submitted by people, under...

Wisconsin Governor and prospective GOP presidential candidate Scott Walker expressed his disagreement with Kentucky Senator and Republican presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on ISIS and the NSA on Thursday’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto” on the Fox News Channel.

The National Security Agency and its closest allies planned to hijack data links to Google and Samsung app stores to infect smartphones with spyware, a top-secret document reveals. The surveillance project was launched by a joint electronic eavesdropping unit called the Network Tradecraft Advancement Team, which includes spies from each of the countries in the “Five Eyes” alliance — the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia. The top-secret document, obtained from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, was published Wednesday by CBC News in collaboration with The Intercept. The document outlines a series of tactics that the NSA...

Donald Trump broached the idea of execution for National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden for the second time in a week Monday. "I think Snowden is a terrible threat, I think he's a terrible traitor, and you know what we used to do in the good old days when we were a strong country? You know what we used to do to traitors, right?" Trump said on the "Fox & Friends" program. "Well, you killed them, Donald," host Eric Bolling replied. Trump appears highly distressed with the whole affair. Snowden is in a Moscow airport, and the U.S. government wants...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The National Security Agency has begun winding down its collection and storage of American phone records after the Senate failed to agree on a path forward to change or extend the once-secret program ahead of its expiration at the end of the month. Barring an 11th hour compromise when the Senate returns to session May 31, a much-debated provision of the Patriot Act — and some other lesser known surveillance tools — will sunset at midnight that day. The change also would have a major impact on the FBI, which uses the Patriot Act and the other...

The Senate is headed for a pair of late Friday evening votes on competing bills to reauthorize portions of the Patriot Act, with little certainty about the path forward. Neither a National Security Agency (NSA) reform bill called the USA Freedom Act nor Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) two-month “clean” extension of the expiring Patriot Act provisions appears to have the necessary 60 votes to move forward. Failure of both measures would increase the odds of an even shorter-term reauthorization of the current law — or the chance that the legal measures expire entirely. “We’re just trying to figure out...

WASHINGTON—The Senate early Saturday defeated a string of efforts to extend the Patriot Act as lawmakers splintered over its contentious phone surveillance program and left town with no plan in place to prevent the law from lapsing. After next week’s Memorial Day recess, the Senate will resume its debate over the national security law at 4 p.m. on May 31, eight hours before the law expires at midnight. Lawmakers fractured through the evening, rejecting a House bill overhauling the NSA, a two-month Patriot Act extension and then increasingly short extensions of the law. Primarily due to objections from presidential candidate...

Rand is still standing. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the libertarian firebrand and GOP presidential hopeful, isn’t showing any sign he’ll relent and allow speedier votes in the Senate on controversial government surveillance programs, as weary and recess-hungry senators trudged through a rare Friday session with a packed to-do list. Paul said Friday that he hasn’t yet agreed to accelerate procedural votes — currently set for Saturday — on dueling proposals to renew expiring provisions in the PATRIOT Act. He had signaled that he might relent if he secured votes on privacy amendments, but shortly before 10 p.m. he said...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) doesn't agree with critics of the National Security Agency's surveillance programs. "There's not a shred of evidence that anybody's civil liberties have been violated by it. Not a shred," Bush said Thursday in New Hampshire, in comments after a breakfast organized by the Concord Chamber of Commerce, according to the Huffington Post. The comment puts Bush, who is considering a presidential bid, on the opposite side of one his likely rivals, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky). Bush vocalized his support for NSA surveillance just hours after Paul, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination,...

Texas Senator and GOP presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)praised fellow presidential candidate and Senator Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) speech against the renewal of the Patriot Act on Wednesday. Cruz began, “I would note he [Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) 93% ] and I agree on a great many issues, although we don’t agree entirely on this issue, but I want to take the opportunity to thank the Senator from Kentucky for his passionate defense of liberty. His is a voice that this body needs to listen to.” And praised the prior work of Rand and his father, former Congressman Ron...

The Patriot Act provisions that have allowed the National Security Agency to vacuum up Americans' phone records officially expire on June 1. But the Obama administration says the NSA must begin preparing to end its bulk-telephone-spying program as soon as Friday. A Justice Department memo circulated among congressional offices Wednesday and obtained by National Journal said Congress needs to fully settle its differences over the expiring spy provisions this week in order to avoid an operational interruption to the NSA's mass-surveillance program, which was exposed by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden two years ago. "After May 22, 2015, the National...

Rand Paul is filibustering the Patriot Act right now, because it continues the unlimited NSA spying on all Americans.