March, 29 2019, 12:00am EDT
Congress Introduces Bipartisan Legislation to Permanently End the NSA's Mass Surveillance of Phone Records
Fight for the Future welcomes the introduction of the “Ending Mass Collection of Americans’ Phone Records Act” as a major first step in restoring civil liberties eroded by the U.S. government’s mass surveillance machine.
WASHINGTON
Yesterday, Senators Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Representatives Justin Amash (R-MI 03) and Zoe Lofgren (D-CA 19) introduced the "Ending Mass Collection of Americans' Phone Records Act." This bipartisan bill (read the full text here) would permanently shut down the ineffective, and nearly two decades old, National Security Agency (NSA) program surveilling all of our telephone records.
Responding to the bill's introduction in both the Senate and House, Fight for the Future campaigner Laila Abdelaziz had this to say:
"This bill will once-and-for-all end the NSA's ineffective and harmful mass surveillance of all of our phone records. It's a welcome and necessary first-step in a longer fight to dismantle the U.S. government's sprawling surveillance state.
This bill was introduced on the same day the public learned about a seperate phone records surveillance program based out of the Drug and Enforcement Agency (DEA)--which resulted in the collection of billions of phone records by the DEA without proper legal review. These government programs rely on powerful telecommunications companies that store our record and data in bulk by default. The consequences of such surveillance in a data-driven economy are frightening.
We hope this bill is the first-step in many others taken by this Congress to end the USA PATRIOT Act and restore key civil liberties required for a healthy democratic society.
Fight for the Future is urging everyone to call their members of Congress and ask them to support the "Ending Mass Collection of Americans' Phone Records Act." This bipartisan bill is a no-brainer and should be passed and signed into law as swiftly as possible. Furthermore, we urge Congressional lawmakers to investigate the DEA's phone records program immediately."
Fight for the Future is a group of artists, engineers, activists, and technologists who have been behind the largest online protests in human history, channeling Internet outrage into political power to win public interest victories previously thought to be impossible. We fight for a future where technology liberates -- not oppresses -- us.
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UN Chief Warns of Israel's Syria Invasion and Land Seizures
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Guterres "is particularly concerned over the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes on several locations in Syria" and has stressed the "urgent need to de-escalate violence on all fronts throughout the country," said U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.
Israel claims its invasion and bombardment of Syria—which come as the United States and Turkey have also violated Syrian sovereignty with air and ground attacks—are meant to create a security buffer along the countries' shared border in the wake of last week's fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and amid the IDF's ongoing assault on Gaza, which has killed or wounded more than 162,000 Palestinians and is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.
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Israel conquered the western two-thirds of the Golan Heights in 1967 and has illegally occupied it ever since, annexing the seized lands in 1981.
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"Killing people is not the way we're going to reform our healthcare system," he said. "The way we're going to reform our healthcare system is having people come together."
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Addressing the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and conversations it has sparked about the country's for-profit system, longtime Medicare for All advocate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday condemned the murder and stressed that getting to universal coverage will require a movement challenging corporate money in politics.
"Look, when we talk about the healthcare crisis, in my view, and I think the view of a majority of Americans, the current system is broken, it is dysfunctional, it is cruel, and it is wildly inefficient—far too expensive," said Sanders (I-Vt.), whose position is backed up by various polls.
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"Killing people is not the way we're going to reform our healthcare system," Sanders added. "The way we're going to reform our healthcare system is having people come together and understanding that it is the right of every American to be able to walk into a doctor's office when they need to and not have to take out their wallet."
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The 83-year-old Vermonter, who was just reelected to what he says is likely his last six-year term, is an Independent but caucuses with Democrats and sought their presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020. He has urged the Democratic Party to recognize why some working-class voters have abandoned it since Republicans won the White House and both chambers of Congress last month. A refusal to take on insurance and drug companies and overhaul the healthcare system, he argues, is one reason.
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In addition to highlighting Sanders' interview on social media, Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) pointed out to Business Insider on Wednesday that "you've got thousands of people that are sharing their stories of frustration" in the wake of Thompson's death.
Khanna—a co-sponsor of the Medicare for All Act, led in the House of Representatives by Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—made the case that you can recognize those stories without accepting the assassination.
"You condemn the murder of an insurance executive who was a father of two kids," he said. "At the same time, you say there's obviously an outpouring behavior of people whose claims are being denied, and we need to reform the system."
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—a co-sponsor of Sanders' Medicare for All Act—similarly toldHuffPost in a Tuesday interview, "The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the healthcare system."
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Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) 2024 roundup, which was published Thursday, found that at least 54 journalists were killed on the job or in connection with their work this year, and 18 of them were killed by Israeli armed forces (16 in Palestine, and two in Lebanon).
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Multiple journalists were also killed in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mexico, Sudan, Myanmar, Colombia, and Ukraine, according to the report, and hundreds more were detained and are now behind bars in countries including Israel, China, and Russia.
Meanwhile, in a statement released Thursday, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) announced that at least 139 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed since the war in Gaza began in 2023, and in a statement released Wednesday, IFJ announced that 104 journalists had perished worldwide this year (which includes deaths from January 1 through December 10). IFJ's number for all of 2024 appears to be higher than RSF because RSF is only counting deaths that occurred "on the job or in connection with their work."
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