Tag Archives: Senate

U.S. to disclose estimate of Americans under surveillance by early 2017

An undated aerial handout photo shows the National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters building in Fort Meade, Maryland.

By Dustin Volz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. intelligence community has committed to providing as soon as next month a public estimate of the number of U.S. persons whose electronic communications are ensnared under a surveillance authority intended for foreign espionage, according to a bipartisan group of congressional lawmakers’ letter that Reuters saw.

The decision would reverse the government’s longstanding position that calculating such a number may be technically impossible and would require privacy intrusions exceeding those raised by the actual surveillance programs.

It also comes as Congress is expected to begin debate in the coming months over whether to reauthorize or reform the surveillance authority, known as Section 702, a provision that was added to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 2008.

The letter, sent on Friday to National Intelligence Director James Clapper, said his office and National Security Agency officials had briefed congressional staff about how the intelligence community intends to comply with the lawmakers’ disclosure request.

Clapper’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The 11 lawmakers, all members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, termed their letter an effort to “memorialize our understanding” of the intelligence community’s plan to provide an estimate in real numbers, not percentages, as soon as January that can be shared with the public.

“The timely production of this information is incredibly important to informed debate on Section 702 in the next Congress— and, without it, even those of us inclined to support re-authorization would have reason for concern,” the letter said.

Section 702 will expire on December 31, 2017, absent congressional action. It enables two internet surveillance programs called Prism and Upstream that were revealed in a series of leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden more than three years ago.

Intelligence officials have said that data about Americans is “incidentally” collected under Section 702, due to a range of technical and practical reasons. Critics have assailed such collection as back-door surveillance of Americans without a warrant.

Clapper, who is stepping down next month, suggested in April that providing an estimate of Americans surveilled under Section 702, a figure some have said could tally in the millions, might be possible, while defending the law as “a prolific producer of critical intelligence.”

Republicans James Sensenbrenner, Darrell Issa, Ted Poe and Jason Chaffetz signed the letter, in addition to Democrats John Conyers, Jerrold Nadler, Zoe Lofgren, Hank Johnson, Ted Deutch, Suzan DelBene and David Cicilline.

(Reporting by Dustin Volz; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

McConnell will not give timeline for Obamacare replacement

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) participates in a ceremony to unveil a portrait honoring retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S.

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Monday the Senate will move to repeal President Barack Obama’s healthcare law shortly after Jan. 1, but declined to give a timeline for a plan to replace it.

McConnell said the Senate would vote as soon as it returns from its year-end recess to repeal Obamacare. “And then we will work expeditiously to come up with a better program than current law, because current law is simply unacceptable and not sustainable,” he said.

Asked repeatedly, McConnell did not give any timeline for when the Republicans would offer their own plan. He said they would be consulting with different “stakeholders.”

Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president last month means Republicans will control the White House, Senate and House of Representatives in 2017. The new Congress goes to work on Jan. 3; Trump will be sworn in on Jan. 20.

Republicans in both the Senate and House of Representatives say they want to repeal Obamacare early in 2017.

But Republicans have not agreed on how quickly the Obamacare repeal should go into effect. A delay would give them time to work on a replacement, instead of throwing millions of Americans out of their health insurance with no substitute.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Matthew Lewis)

FBI to gain expanded hacking powers as Senate effort to block fails

Password on Computer Screen

By Dustin Volz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A last-ditch effort in the Senate to block or delay rule changes that would expand the U.S. government’s hacking powers failed Wednesday, despite concerns the changes would jeopardize the privacy rights of innocent Americans and risk possible abuse by the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump.

Democratic Senator Ron Wyden attempted three times to delay the changes, which will take effect on Thursday and allow U.S. judges will be able to issue search warrants that give the FBI the authority to remotely access computers in any jurisdiction, potentially even overseas. His efforts were blocked by Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the Senate’s second-ranking Republican.

The changes will allow judges to issue warrants in cases when a suspect uses anonymizing technology to conceal the location of his or her computer or for an investigation into a network of hacked or infected computers, such as a botnet.

Magistrate judges can currently only order searches within the jurisdiction of their court, which is typically limited to a few counties.

In a speech from the Senate floor, Wyden said that the changes to Rule 41 of the federal rules of criminal procedure amounted to “one of the biggest mistakes in surveillance policy in years.”

The government will have “unprecedented authority to hack into Americans’ personal phones, computers and other devices,” Wyden said.

He added that such authority, which was approved by the Supreme Court in a private vote earlier this year, but was not subject to congressional approval, was especially troubling in the hands of an administration of President-elect Trump, a Republican who has “openly said he wants the power to hack his political opponents the same way Russia does.”

Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware and Republican Senator Steve Daines of Montana also delivered speeches voicing opposition to the rule changes.

The U.S. Justice Department has pushed for the changes to the federal rules of criminal procedure for years, arguing they are procedural in nature and the criminal code needed to be modernized for the digital age.

In an effort to address concerns, U.S. Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell wrote a blog post this week arguing that the benefits given to authorities from the rule changes outweighed any potential for “unintended harm.”

“The possibility of such harm must be balanced against the very real and ongoing harms perpetrated by criminals – such as hackers, who continue to harm the security and invade the privacy of Americans through an ongoing botnet, or pedophiles who openly and brazenly discuss their plans to sexually assault children,” Caldwell wrote.

A handful of judges in recent months had dismissed evidence brought as part of a sweeping FBI child pornography sting, saying the search warrants used to hack suspects’ computers exceeded their jurisdiction.

The new rules are expected to make such searches generally valid.

Blocking the changes would have required legislation to pass both houses of Congress, then be signed into law by the president.

(Reporting by Dustin Volz, editing by G Crosse)

Senate clears way for $1.15 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia

battle tank

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate cleared the way for a $1.15 billion sale of tanks and other military equipment to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, defending a frequent partner in the Middle East recently subject to harsh criticism in Congress.

The Senate voted 71 to 27 to kill legislation that would have stopped the sale.

The overwhelming vote stopped an effort led by Republican Senator Rand Paul and Democratic Senator Chris Murphy to block the deal over concerns including Saudi Arabia’s role in the 18-month-long war in Yemen and worries that it might fuel an ongoing regional arms race.

The Pentagon announced on Aug. 9 that the State Department had approved the potential sale of more than 130 Abrams battle tanks, 20 armored recovery vehicles and other equipment to Saudi Arabia.

The Defense Security Cooperation Agency said General Dynamics Corp would be the principal contractor for the sale.

Paul, Murphy and other opponents of the arms deal were sharply critical of the Riyadh government during debate before the vote, citing Yemen, the kingdom’s human rights record and its international support for a conservative form of Islam.

“If you’re serious about stopping the flow of extremist recruiting across this globe, then you have to be serious that the … brand of Islam that is spread by Saudi Arabia all over the world, is part of the problem,” Murphy said.

The criticism came days before lawmakers are expected to back another measure seen as anti-Saudi, a bill that would allow lawsuits against the country’s government by relatives of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.

President Barack Obama has promised to veto that bill, but congressional leaders say there is a strong chance that lawmakers will override the veto and let the measure become law. Overriding a presidential veto requires a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate.

In Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition is battling Iranian-allied Houthis, the Houthis have accused the United States of arming and supporting the Saudis, who intervened on the side of Yemen’s exiled government.

The war has killed over 10,000 people and displaced more than 3 million.

But backers of the deal said Saudi Arabia is an important U.S. ally in a war-torn region, deserving of U.S. support.

“This motion comes at a singularly unfortunate time and would serve to convince Saudi Arabia and all other observers that the United States does not live up to its commitments,” Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Grant McCool and Sandra Maler)

McCain vows to block proposed separation of NSA, cyber command

U.S. Senator John McCain speaks at the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany,

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senator John McCain said on Tuesday he would use his power to block the confirmation of a key cybersecurity official if necessary to prevent any Obama administration move to separate the U.S. Cyber Command from the National Security Agency.

“I do not believe rushing to separate the ‘dual hat’ in the final months of an administration is appropriate, given the very serious challenges we face in cyberspace,” McCain, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said at a hearing.

“Dual hat” refers to one individual holding both positions.

Current and former U.S. officials told Reuters in August that President Barack Obama’s administration was preparing to elevate the stature of the Department of Defense’s Cyber Command, including separating it from the NSA.

Officials argued that the focus of the NSA, a spy agency responsible for electronic eavesdropping, is gathering intelligence, often favoring the monitoring of an enemy’s cyber activities.

Cyber Command’s mission is geared more to shutting down cyber attacks – and, if ordered, counter attacking.

McCain said the two agencies must work closely together to protect U.S. national security and he would block any nominee if that person was not nominated both to run the NSA and lead Cyber Command.

He also said he wanted the administration to provide his panel with detailed plans of its proposed reorganization.

“This committee does not take well to being stonewalled while their colleagues in the administration leak information to the press,” McCain said.

Admiral Mike Rogers, the current NSA director and head of Cyber Command, told the hearing that he did not think it was in the best U.S. national security interest at this point to separate the two functions.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Bill Trott)

U.S. GMO food labeling bill passes Senate

A customer picks up produce near a sign supporting a ballot initiative in Washington state that would require labelling of foods containing genetically modified crops at the Central Co-op in Seattle, Washington October 29, 2013. REUTERS/Jason Redmond

By Chris Prentice

(Reuters) – The U.S. Senate on Thursday approved legislation that would for the first time require food to carry labels listing genetically-modified ingredients, which labeling supporters say could create loopholes for some U.S. crops.

The Senate voted 63-30 for the bill that would display GMO contents with words, pictures or a bar code that can be scanned with smartphones. The U.S. Agriculture Department (USDA) would decide which ingredients would be considered genetically modified.

The measure now goes to the House of Representatives, where it is expected to pass.

Drawing praise from farmers, the bill sponsored by Republican Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas and Democrat Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan is the latest attempt to introduce a national standard that would override state laws, including Vermont’s that some say is more stringent, and comes amid growing calls from consumers for greater transparency.

“This bipartisan bill ensures that consumers and families throughout the United States will have access, for the first time ever, to information about their food through a mandatory, nationwide label for food products with GMOs,” Stabenow said in a statement.

A nationwide standard is favored by the food industry, which says state-by-state differences could inflate costs for labeling and distribution. But mandatory GMO labeling of any kind would still be seen as a loss for Big Food, which has spent millions lobbying against it.

Farmers lobbied against the Vermont law, worrying that labeling stigmatizes GMO crops and could hurt demand for food containing those ingredients, but have applauded this law.

Critics like Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, say the bill’s vague language and allowance for electronic labels for scanning could limit its scope and create confusion.

“When parents go to the store and purchase food, they have the right to know what is in the food their kids are going to be eating,” Sanders said on the floor of the Senate ahead of the vote.

He said at a news conference this week that major food manufacturers have already begun labeling products with GMO ingredients to meet the new law in his home state.

Another opponent of the bill, Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, said it would institute weak federal requirements making it virtually impossible for consumers to access information about GMOs.

LOOPHOLES

Food ingredients like beet sugar and soybean oil, which can be derived from genetically-engineered crops but contain next to no genetic material by the time they are processed, may not fall under the law’s definition of a bioengineered food, critics say.

GMO corn may also be excluded thanks to ambiguous language, some said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) raised concerns about the involvement of the USDA in a list of worries sent in a June 27 memo to the Senate Agriculture Committee.

In a letter to Stabenow last week, the USDA’s general counsel tried to quell those worries, saying it would include commercially-grown GMO corn, soybeans, sugar and canola crops.

The vast majority of corn, soybeans and sugar crops in the United States are produced from genetically-engineered seeds. The domestic sugar market has been strained by rising demand for non-GMO ingredients like cane sugar.

The United States is the world’s largest market for foods made with genetically altered ingredients. Many popular processed foods are made with soybeans, corn and other biotech crops whose genetic traits have been manipulated, often to make them resistant to insects and pesticides.

“It’s fair to say that it’s not the ideal bill, but it is certainly the bill that can pass, which is the most important right now,” said American Soybean Association’s (ASA) director of policy communications Patrick Delaney.

The association was part of the Coalition for Safe and Affordable Food, which lobbied for what labeling supporters termed the Deny Americans the Right to Know, or DARK Act, that would have made labeling voluntary. It was blocked by the Senate in March.

(Reporting by Chris Prentice in New York; Additional reporting by Karl Plume in Chicago, Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles and Kouichi Shirayanagi and Eric Beech in Washington; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Ed Davies)

U.S. Republicans push back on Democratic gun control efforts

Handguns are seen for sale in a display case at Metro Shooting Supplies in Bridgeton, Missouri,

By David Morgan and Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. congressional Republicans on Tuesday resisted Democratic demands for a vote on gun-control measures and warned that some could face punishment for an unusual sit-in last month that tied up the House of Representatives for 25 hours.

With Democrats already rejecting a Republican gun bill and warning of further protests, the Republican-controlled House appeared to be heading for renewed discord over gun restrictions following the June 12 mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

House Speaker Paul Ryan met for about 30 minutes on Tuesday with two Democrats who led the sit-in: Representatives John Lewis of Georgia and John Larson of Connecticut. The Democrats said they would ask Ryan for a vote on two Democratic-backed measures but left the meeting without speaking to reporters.

“The path ahead … will be discussed and determined by the majority in the coming days,” Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong said later in a statement.

The measures sought by Democrats would expand background checks for gun purchases and allow the government to block gun sales to suspected extremists without first getting a judge’s approval.

Hours before the meeting, Ryan suggested a vote on the Democratic legislation was unlikely, telling a Milwaukee radio station: “The last thing we are going to do is surrender the floor over to these kinds of tactics when we know it’s going to compromise the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens.”

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy said separately that he and Ryan would meet this week with the chamber’s top enforcement official to talk about reports that some Democrats at the June 22-23 sit-in engaged in “intimidation” while carrying out their protest.

Ryan has announced that the House will vote this week on a measure intended to keep guns out of the hands of people the government suspects of involvement in violent extremism. But Democrats say the legislation is inadequate because authorities would have only three days to convince a judge that a gun sale should be blocked.

“Ninety-one people die each day from gun violence in this country and the best Speaker Ryan can muster is a meaningless bill,” said House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi aide Drew Hammill.

Six people who said they lost family and loved ones to gun violence were arrested in the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, after a protest demanding Congress reject the Ryan measure and vote on the Democratic measures.

(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by James Dalgleish and Peter Cooney)

Senate votes down proposal to expand FBI surveillance powers

FBI at the Pulse

By Dustin Volz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate on Wednesday voted down a Republican-backed proposal to expand the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s secretive surveillance powers after the mass shooting at an Orlando gay nightclub last week.

The measure followed the Senate’s rejection on Monday of four measures that would have restricted gun sales.

During Wednesday’s vote, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell switched his vote to ‘no,’ giving himself the opportunity to bring the measure up for consideration again as soon as later this week.

The legislation would broaden the type of telephone and internet records the FBI could request from companies such as the Google unit of Alphabet Inc and Verizon Communications Inc without a warrant. Opponents, including some major technology companies, have said it would threaten civil liberties and do little to improve national security.

The legislation before the Senate on Wednesday, filed as an amendment to a criminal justice funding bill, would widen the FBI’s authority to use so-called National Security Letters, which do not require a warrant and whose very existence is usually a secret.

Such letters can compel a company to hand over a user’s phone billing records. Under the Senate’s change, the FBI would be able to demand electronic communications transaction records such as time stamps of emails and the emails’ senders and recipients, in addition to some information about websites a person visits and social media log-in data.

It would not enable the FBI to use national security letters to obtain the actual content of electronic communications.

The legislation would also make permanent a provision of the USA Patriot Act that lets the intelligence community conduct surveillance on “lone wolf” suspects who do not have confirmed ties to a foreign terrorist group. That provision, which the Justice Department said last year had never been used, expires in December 2019.

The bill had been expected to narrowly pass but it fell two votes short of the required 60.

The future of the Senate proposal in the House of Representatives was also uncertain, given its alliance between libertarian-leaning Republicans and tech-friendly Democrats that has blocked past efforts to expand surveillance.

Privacy groups and civil liberties advocates accused Republicans this week of exploiting the Orlando shooting to build support for unrelated legislation.

Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, criticized Senate Republicans for “pushing fake, knee-jerk solutions that will do nothing to prevent mass shootings or terrorist attacks.”

Though Republicans invoked the Orlando shooting in support of the bill, FBI Director James Comey has said Omar Mateen’s transactional records were fully reviewed by authorities who investigated him twice for possible extremist ties.

Comey said there was “no indication” Mateen belonged to any extremist group and that it was unlikely authorities could have done anything differently to prevent the attack.

(Reporting by Dustin Volz; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Bernard Orr)

Senate likely to pass FBI spying bill after Orlando shooting

Man paying respect to the dead at Pulse memorial

By Dustin Volz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate on Wednesday is likely to pass a Republican-backed proposal to expand the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s secretive surveillance powers after the mass shooting at an Orlando gay nightclub last week.

The spying bill is the Republican response to the massacre after a push for gun-control measures sponsored by both major U.S. parties failed earlier this week.

The legislation would broaden the type of telephone and internet records the FBI could request from companies like Alphabet Inc and Verizon without a warrant. The proposal met opposition from critics who said it threatened civil liberties and did little to improve national security.

The bill, which the Obama administration has sought for years, “will allow the FBI to collect the dots so they can connect the dots, and that’s been the biggest problem that they’ve had in identifying these homegrown, radicalized terrorists,’” Senator John Cornyn, the chamber’s No. 2 Republican, said Tuesday.

The vote also represents a bi-partisan drift away from policy positions that favored digital privacy, which had taken hold in the three years since former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed the breadth of government surveillance programs.

The post-Snowden moves included the most substantial reforms to the U.S. intelligence community since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and a refusal to heed the FBI’s call for laws that would undermine encryption.

It is unclear if the House would pass the Senate proposal, given its alliance between libertarian-leaning Republicans and tech-friendly Democrats that has blocked past efforts to expand surveillance.

The legislation before the Senate Wednesday, filed as an amendment to a criminal justice funding bill, would widen the FBI’s authority to use so-called National Security Letters, which do not require a warrant and whose very existence is usually a secret.

Such letters can currently compel a company to hand over a user’s phone billing records. Under the Senate’s change they could demand electronic communications transaction records such as time stamps of emails and the emails’ senders and recipients, in addition to some information about websites a person visits.

The legislation would also make permanent a provision of the USA Patriot Act that allows the intelligence community to conduct surveillance on “lone wolf” suspects who do not have confirmed ties to a foreign terrorist group. That provision, which the Justice Department said last year had never been used, is currently set to expire in December 2019.

‘KNEE-JERK SOLUTIONS’

Privacy groups and civil liberties advocates accused Republicans this week of exploiting the Orlando shooting to build support for unrelated legislation.

Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, criticized Senate Republicans for “pushing fake, knee-jerk solutions that will do nothing to prevent mass shootings or terrorist attacks.”

Though Republicans invoked the Orlando shooting in support of the bill, FBI Director James Comey has said Mateen’s transactional records were fully reviewed by authorities who investigated him twice for possible extremist ties.

Comey said there was “no indication” Mateen belonged to any extremist group and that it was unlikely authorities could have done anything differently to prevent the attack.

(Reporting by Dustin Volz; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Andrew Hay)

Senators working to craft new gun control compromise

A gun rights supporter openly carries two pistols strapped to his leg during a rally in support of the Michigan Open Carry gun law in Romulus

By Susan Cornwell and Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A group of Republican senators on Friday were trying to craft compromise gun control legislation that could attract both Republicans and Democrats and have a hope of passing the U.S. Senate, unlike several measures that are expected to be voted on next week for which prospects appear dim.

Congress is under pressure to act after the massacre last Sunday of 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history. But the gun control issue is deeply divisive and there have been no restrictions passed since 1994, when Congress imposed a ban on semi-automatic assault weapons. That expired after 10 years.

The new effort, led by Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine, would aim to close a loophole in U.S. law that allows people on terrorism watch lists to buy weapons and explosives.

Both the gunman in the Orlando attack and the married couple who carried out a mass shooting that killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, last December were thought to have been inspired by militant Islamist groups abroad.

Collins’ proposal likely would be offered in the divided, Republican-controlled Senate sometime next week – assuming that four other gun-control proposals set for votes on Monday fail, as expected.

Collins’ office declined to provide a detailed account of legislation she is working on with Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire.

But Collins discussed the project with journalists outside the Senate on Thursday, noting that barring people on terrorism watch lists from weapons purchases carried with it the risk of affecting people who have been swept onto the lists without good cause.

“What we’re trying to do is not deny constitutional rights to a large group of individuals” who find themselves on watch lists despite the fact that there might not be credible evidence of potential criminal intentions, Collins said.

At least one Senate Democrat, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, has been involved in the talks, according to a spokeswoman.

A Senate Republican aide who asked not to be identified, said the bill “will aim to have teeth on preventing terrorists from getting guns and contain protections for due process” for those who should not be denied their rights to buy weapons.

It will not be known whether a Collins bill would attract wide bipartisan support until the measure is unveiled.

On Monday evening, senators are scheduled to vote on two Republican and two Democratic amendments dealing with expanded background checks for gun buyers and denying sales to those on watch lists.

Democrats have criticized the Republican measures as being ineffective and Republicans have accused Democrats of crafting bills that would trample constitutional rights to bear arms.

The competing watch-list proposals were defeated in the Senate last December, following the shooting in San Bernardino.

“Rather than doing Ground Hog Day, I think its time for a new approach and a more targeted one,” Collins said in an apparent reference to a 1993 film in which the main character is doomed to relive the same unpleasant day over and over again.

Lawmakers are looking at whether to ban guns to prospective buyers who are on a broad terrorist watch list that is run by the FBI, but not on one of the subset lists such as the “no-fly” list, she said, adding that there could still be an “alert” to law enforcement officials that the purchase was being made.

U.S. authorities maintain several watch lists – the FBI maintains three and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence runs one database. People are placed on such a list according to the threat level they are believed to pose.

The Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen, had been on a government watch list at one point when he was being investigated by federal authorities in 2013 and 2014, but was not on it at the time of his weapons purchase. The couple who carried out the San Bernardino shooting were not on watch lists.

(Reporting by Susan Cornwell and Richard Cowan; Editing by Frances Kerry)