“House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte said he supports a bill to let companies such as Facebook Inc. and Apple Inc. release statistics on data they turn over to the U.S. National Security Agency,” Heidi Przybyla and Chris Strohm report for Bloomberg. “The companies want to publicly disclose how they respond to government orders for data on their customers and how many accounts are involved.”
“Those that cooperate ‘need to be able to stand up and say, ‘We’re doing the right thing here, and we’re protecting our customers, our consumers, the users of our services,” Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican, said on Bloomberg Television’s ‘Political Capital with Al Hunt,'” airing this weekend,” Przybyla and Strohm report. “The legislation, proposed in response to revelations about NSA surveillance, would give companies that right. It would also overhaul the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which reviews wiretap and other investigative requests, and prohibit the agency from collecting bulk phone records on millions of Americans, among other provisions.”
Przybyla and Strohm report, “‘It very well could and should’ pass, Goodlatte said. He said it was important to both protect civil liberties and to allow the government to continue gathering information on threats to the nation.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: United States Constitution, Amendment IV:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
Join The Electronic Frontier Foundation in calling for a full congressional investigation here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
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