Wired News: NSA Bill Performs a Patriot Act
Wired News: NSA Bill Performs a Patriot Act
A bill radically redefining and expanding the government’s ability to eavesdrop and search the houses of U.S. citizens without court approval passed a key Senate committee Wednesday, and may be voted on by the full Senate as early as next week.
By a 10-8 vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved SB2453, the National Security Surveillance Act (.pdf), which was co-written by committee’s chairman Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) in concert with the White House.
Privacy, and national security have been great concerns of mine as of late. Despite Wired being a respected news source, I wanted to find the text of the bill from an official government source.
S.2453 National Security Surveillance Act of 2006 (Introduced in Senate). From that page I clicked on GPO’s PDF Display to download the following PDF copy that I have uploaded to this server: National Security Surveillance act of 2006. I recommend going to the official site and downloading the document directly from the GPO. I have not modified it; however, it is always best to be cautious.
There were some differences in wording between the copy from Wired and the one on Thomas. The Wired version is denoted as a Discussion Draft. That leads me to believe that the version I have obtained from the GPO is more recent. I will refer to the version linked in the Wired article as Discussion Draft from this point on.
I am analyzing the differences; however, it is going to take some time. The Discussion Draft is password protected and does not allow for copying of the text. I am having to retype excerpts from the Discussion Draft. More will be forthcoming in a few hours. I have to decide whether to type this all out, or produce a short synopsis and encourage others to view the primary documents to find the exact differences. I will likely have to do the latter due to time constraints.
Update: It appears that the Discussion Draft may be newer.
According to this page on Thomas:
- 3/16/2006 Introduced/originated in Senate
- 9/13/2006 Committee on the Judiciary. Reported by Senator Specter with an amendment in the nature of a substitute. Without written report.
- 9/13/2006 Placed on Senate Legislative Calendar under General Orders. Calendar No. 609.
The version from the GPO shows it as being from 3/15/2006. The Discussion Draft does not include a date, but it does have blank fields for Ammendment No. and Calendar No.
Update: I worked on an analysis and posted what I ended up with here.