Patriot Act Author Supports ACLU Lawsuit Against NSA Bulk Data Collection Program

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/09/05/patriot-act-author-supports-aclu-lawsuit-against-nsa-bulk-data-collection-program/

One of the authors of the PATRIOT Act, which granted the Executive Branch of government broad powers to fight alleged terrorists after the September 11th attacks, has filed a brief in support of a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that aims to challenge the NSA’s massive collection of Americans’ phone records.

The lawsuit, according to the ACLU, “argues that the dragnet, justified by the PATRIOT Act’s Section 215, violates the right of privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment as well as the First Amendment rights of free speech and association.” It also argues that the “program exceeds the authority that Congress provided through the PATRIOT Act.”

In June of this year, The Guardian published a secret order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to Verizon that required the company to turn over the phone records of all Americans on an “ongoing daily basis.” The order was provided to The Guardian by former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden and showed how the government was sweeping up metadata on Americans’ phone calls that could reveal “intimate details” of citizens not suspected of being engaged in any acts of terrorism whatsoever.

Republican Representative Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin was one of the first members of Congress to condemn what was revealed in the secret order to Verizon and state this kind of collection of data was not what had been authorized by the PATRIOT Act.