jct74
07-16-2016, 06:46 PM
The Fourth Amendment Gets Its Own House Caucus to Demand Its Respect
Coalition of 25 bipartisan lawmakers organizes against unwarranted surveillance and data collection.
Scott Shackford
Jul. 14, 2016 3:30 pm
Does Congress actually need a special caucus to advocate on behalf of a civil liberty that is spelled out in the Constitution's Bill of Rights?
For 25 lawmakers in the House of Representatives, when it comes to the Fourth Amendment, the answer is increasingly "yes." On Wednesday, the Hill saw the formal launch of the Fourth Amendment Caucus, a bipartisan coalition (nearly evenly divided between the two parties) of those who are concerned about the degradation of the right of Americans to protect their communications and personal information from unwarranted government searches.
Edward Snowden has become a household name since he revealed the United States government was secretly collecting massive amounts of data from its citizens own communications without their knowledge, all ostensibly to help fight terrorism. Snowden's decision to blow the whistle on the behavior of the National Security Agency (NSA) was intended, in part, to highlight the increasing degredation of the citizen protections of the Fourth Amendment.
And yet, in the wake of his revelations and the public outrage, agencies like the NSA and FBI continue to push for more authority to collect data about American citizens without having to turn to warrants. The FBI wants to increase the data it can gather through the use of secret National Security Letters. An attempt to expand the authority of the Patriot Act to get banks to share data from its customers with the government to fight crimes beyond terrorism and money-laundering was just defeated in the House.
Two of the House members who were vocal about stopping that Patriot Act expansion, Reps. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), are members of this new Fourth Amendment Caucus. The caucus was the brainchild of Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) a strong supporter of requiring better citizen privacy protections and for the NSA and feds to respect the restrictions the Fourth Amendment puts in place when investigating crime and terrorism. Poe asked Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) to help chair the caucus. Lofgren recently worked with Massie to attempt to pass legislation to try to force the feds to get warrants to access collected data on American citizens. Their efforts failed. The two are also strong voices in trying to protect tech companies from federal efforts to force them to make "back doors" in their software or otherwise weaken their encryption to assist authorities in investigations.
Other members of Congress known for speaking out on the Fourth Amendment are also on the caucus. Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), who has been trying to change federal law to require warrants to access old emails, is on the caucus. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), who blatantly once told a district attorney with a dim view of encryption to "follow the damn Constitution," is in the caucus. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), himself once a target of federal surveillance during the civil rights movement, is in the caucus.
...
read more:
http://reason.com/blog/2016/07/14/the-fourth-amendment-gets-its-own-house
Coalition of 25 bipartisan lawmakers organizes against unwarranted surveillance and data collection.
Scott Shackford
Jul. 14, 2016 3:30 pm
Does Congress actually need a special caucus to advocate on behalf of a civil liberty that is spelled out in the Constitution's Bill of Rights?
For 25 lawmakers in the House of Representatives, when it comes to the Fourth Amendment, the answer is increasingly "yes." On Wednesday, the Hill saw the formal launch of the Fourth Amendment Caucus, a bipartisan coalition (nearly evenly divided between the two parties) of those who are concerned about the degradation of the right of Americans to protect their communications and personal information from unwarranted government searches.
Edward Snowden has become a household name since he revealed the United States government was secretly collecting massive amounts of data from its citizens own communications without their knowledge, all ostensibly to help fight terrorism. Snowden's decision to blow the whistle on the behavior of the National Security Agency (NSA) was intended, in part, to highlight the increasing degredation of the citizen protections of the Fourth Amendment.
And yet, in the wake of his revelations and the public outrage, agencies like the NSA and FBI continue to push for more authority to collect data about American citizens without having to turn to warrants. The FBI wants to increase the data it can gather through the use of secret National Security Letters. An attempt to expand the authority of the Patriot Act to get banks to share data from its customers with the government to fight crimes beyond terrorism and money-laundering was just defeated in the House.
Two of the House members who were vocal about stopping that Patriot Act expansion, Reps. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), are members of this new Fourth Amendment Caucus. The caucus was the brainchild of Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) a strong supporter of requiring better citizen privacy protections and for the NSA and feds to respect the restrictions the Fourth Amendment puts in place when investigating crime and terrorism. Poe asked Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) to help chair the caucus. Lofgren recently worked with Massie to attempt to pass legislation to try to force the feds to get warrants to access collected data on American citizens. Their efforts failed. The two are also strong voices in trying to protect tech companies from federal efforts to force them to make "back doors" in their software or otherwise weaken their encryption to assist authorities in investigations.
Other members of Congress known for speaking out on the Fourth Amendment are also on the caucus. Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), who has been trying to change federal law to require warrants to access old emails, is on the caucus. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), who blatantly once told a district attorney with a dim view of encryption to "follow the damn Constitution," is in the caucus. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), himself once a target of federal surveillance during the civil rights movement, is in the caucus.
...
read more:
http://reason.com/blog/2016/07/14/the-fourth-amendment-gets-its-own-house