14 DAY TRIAL // The Amash amendment may have suffered a quick dismissal, but it was only because the intelligence community leaders, as well as US President Obama rallied together to oppose the act that would have drastically limited the NSA’s ability to spy on everyone.
And while that bill didn’t pass, a dozen have appeared in its wake, aiming to put a stop to what’s been happening.
Mother Jones made a list of a few pending bills that would strongly affect the government spying.
For instance, The Surveillance State Repeal Act, sponsored by Rush Holt, seeks to completely repeal the Patriot Act and the 2008 amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The Surveillance Transparency Act of 2013 is another project that could affect the NSA gravely. One of the complaints coming from Google and Facebook, as well as other tech giants, is that they are forbidden to tell users when they are pushed to give data on their names. The bill would require the government to create annual public reports of all orders granted under FISA and the Patriot Act.
The Libert-E Act, supported by John Conyers and Justin Amash, takes aim at Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which set the base for the broad phone surveillance. The new legislation says the government has to come up with hard-facts to justify surveillance is relevant to an investigation.
The FISA Accountability and Privacy Protection Act of 2013, sponsored by Patrick Leahy, seeks to shed more light on the programs the NSA runs by having a watchdog audit national security letters and top secret orders.
Other bills regard the FISA court and the judges that form it. Since the court has often been criticized for being a simple rubber stamp that agreed with the NSA requests without much evidence, any bill directed at it could only improve the situation.