U.S. patriotic act granting agencies the right to mass wiretap suspended

Senator Rand Paul / John Pemble

US Senate not extended the federal law known as Patriot Act ( Patriot Act ), which was adopted after the terrorist act of September 11, 2001. The law had a limited duration, and since its extension did not take place in the Senate, the law was terminated on the night of June 1. The NSA (National Security Agency, NSA) suspended the mass wiretapping that she conducted in connection with this law in advance, 4 hours before midnight.

Instead of a Patriotic Act, privacy advocates have been promoting the USA Freedom Act since 2013"(" US Freedom Act "). His name is an acronym that stands for" The Act of Unifying and Strengthening America by Enforcing Rights and Ending Wiretapping, Mass Data Collection and Online Surveillance. "The act corrects many provisions of the laws that allowed PRISM to in particular, it prohibits mass wiretapping and obliges special services to receive warrants for wiretapping of specific people.

Due to the specifics of the Senate, any senator can block the adoption of the law. In this case, Senator Rand Paul, who has long been a speaker against the practice of mass surveillance He recently announced his intention to participate in the presidential race in 2016. In this regard, current US President Barack Obama accused Paul of trying to “gain political points” in this case.

The patriotic act, or rather, the act "On rallying and strengthening America by providing the appropriate means required to suppress and prevent terrorism" of 2001, was adopted shortly after the notorious terrorist attack, which, according to the official version, Arab terrorists from " Al-Qaeda "with the help of two hijacked planes brought down the World Trade Center, drove a third plane into the Pentagon, and the fourth plane, where passengers rebelled against the capture, fell into the field.

In addition to the unprecedentedly wide powers that the special services received in connection with the adoption of this law, the PRISM system was also developed and adopted in 2007, at the time of adoption it was completely secret. It allowed conducting mass surveillance of a huge number of people, recording, storing and filtering their negotiations over telephone networks and the Internet. The system became known after one of the NSA employees, Edward Snowden , in 2013 decided to inform the public about it.