Rainey Reitman writes:
We could be celebrating the New Year by ripping out the fiber optic cables that are sending copies of all our emails to the National Security Agency. But instead, Congress is planning on ringing in 2013 by re-authorizing parts of the FISA Amendments Act, the controversial 2008 bill that allows Americans speaking to people overseas to be surveilled without warrants.
The House of Representatives has already passed a five-year extension on the Act with no reforms. Now the Senate has only a few days left to consider the matter, and our contacts in DC say the Senate is planning on reauthorizing the bill for 5 years without any meaningful amendments to protect privacy or increase transparency, much less allow Senators to debate its merits.
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