You already?know about the Keystone XL Pipeline proposal that failed to?pass the Senate on Tuesday night, but I want to tell you about another bill up for vote that received no hype. You most likely?didn’t hear any public cries to contact your congressman about it, you didn’t see any groups marching either for or against it, and after it missed being passed by a two vote margin, it probably didn’t even register as a blip on your media radar.

It’s a bill that none of us seemed to care about, but maybe we should have.

The USA Freedom Act

I’m wary of anything circulating through the government with the word ‘freedom’ or ‘patriot’ or any other buzzword meant to stir my feelings of nationalism. Ever since?Bush II, those types of things make the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Still, the USA Freedom Act was?the exception that proves the rule.

Wikipedia.org
Wikipedia.org

You see, because of the Patriot Act, the NSA currently receives all metadata collected by phone companies. They get copies of all your calls and texts, and they can sort through them as they please for any or no reason at all. The USA Freedom Act would have changed that.

 

“The bill would have ended the controversial phone record metadata collection by the NSA …?While telephone companies would have still collected the data in question, the records would have stayed in the hands of the phone companies and a new type of court order would have been needed by the government to access these records. Additionally, companies would no longer have been required to hold onto their records longer than they ordinarily would have for normal business purposes.” The Verge


But it didn’t pass. A chance for ‘We The People’ to win back some of that lost freedom has slipped by, seemingly without a whimper. Right? Wrong.

More To Come

You can bet that some form of legislation is going to be passed between now and June of 2015. It’s almost guaranteed.

“Next June, the legal basis for the phone record collection program as part of the Patriot Act will expire ? so new legislation will be required if the NSA wants to have continued easy access to these records.”?The Verge

And they do, they really do.?So you can be sure there will be another opportunity to make your voice heard on this issue. Let’s not let the next one sneak by us without a sound.


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