A lopsided vote in the U.S. House of Representatives this week to rein in the National Security Agency’s domestic telephone records dragnet won muted praise, with many supporters calling on Congress to take stronger action.

Critics, meanwhile, slammed the USA Freedom Act for extending the section of the antiterrorism Patriot Act that the NSA has used to collect the telephone records of nearly all U.S. residents. The bill, passed by a 338-88 vote late Wednesday, would end the NSA’s bulk collection of domestic telephone records, while allowing the agency to continue to collect phone and other business records in a more targeted manner.

The bill’s failure to kill the business and telephone records section of the Patriot Act, which would expire on June 1 without congressional action, is “fake reform,” according to digital rights groups Fight for the Future and Demand Progress and progressive carrier CREDO Mobile. The bill would expand NSA surveillance powers to VoIP and video chats and would take the “wind out of the sails of real reform by appearing to have addressed mass surveillance,” the groups said on a new website, USAFreedom.fail.

Read the Full Article: Source – Computer World
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2922387/data-privacy/critics-blast-nsa-phone-records-bill-as-fake-reform.html

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