Warrantless wiretap bill passes in US House, Authorizes 5 More Years of Domestic Spying

From the Verge:

In a 301 to 118 decision, the US House of Representatives has voted in favor of the FISA Amendments Act Reauthorization Act of 2012, a bill which will extend the US government's previously established warrantless wiretapping programs for the next five years. The bill preserves far-reaching and highly controversial enhancements to government surveillance powers granted under amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 2008, and has been met with considerable resistance from privacy groups and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle.

FISA was originally tasked with preventing American citizens from being spied on following a 1978 scandal that found Richard Nixon's administration using US intelligence agencies to target activists and political opponents. But those protections have since been severely eroded, first by the USA Patriot Act in 2001, and again by the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, greatly expanding government surveillance powers to allow warrantless wiretapping of phone, email, and other communications.

Full article can be found here.

New Report from ACLU on "Sneak and Peek" Warrants Permitted by Patriot Act

The ACLU reports that between October 1, 2009 and September 30, 2010 federal judges permitted government "sneak and peak" warrants permitted by the Patriot Act. The ACLU contacted the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts to obtain up-to-date numbers on how frequently the government uses the "sneak and peek" searches (also called delayed-notice searches), a government surveillance tool authorized by the Patriot Act. The report (available here) shows that in 2010, sneak and peek warrants were issued more than twice as often as in 2009, and more than three times as often as in 2008.