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CRS Legal Sidebar USA FREEDOM Act Reinstates Expired USA PATRIOT Act Provisions but Limits Bulk Collection 6/4/2015: “Following a contentious debate and passagein the Senate, the USA FREEDOM Act (H.R. 2048) was signed into law onJune 2, 2015. The new law contains eight titles, spanning a range of national security topics from reauthorizing expired investigative …
“The Information Security Oversight Office’s (ISOO) Report for Fiscal Year 2014, as required by Executive Order 13526, “Classified National Security Information” (the Order). This report provides statistics and analysis of the system of classification and declassification based on ISOO’s review of Departments’ and Agencies’ programs. It also contains the status of agency self-assessment reporting, the …
National Journal – “Don’t be fooled: Congress may have finally passed the bill reining in the National Security Agency’s bulk-surveillance programs [USA Freedom Act of 2015], but your data is still being collected on the Internet. Lost in the debate over the NSA is the fact that companies like Google and Facebook continue to vacuum …
Please see the full posting by Andrew Weber: “So far, 2015 has been a great year for Congress.gov. First, we launched email alerts in February. Then, we added treaty documents and more in March. With today’s update, improvements have been made to search (results, command line and advanced), alerts, browse, and accessibility. The Federalist Papers have …
Testimony of Danielle Brian, Executive Director, Project On Government Oversight, before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee regarding “Watchdogs Needed: Top Government Investigator Positions Left Unfilled for Years” June 3, 2015. “At their best, Offices of Inspector General (OIG) are essential to a well-functioning federal government. IG offices recover billions of dollars in …
Social Media – the Local TV for the Next Generation? “When it comes to where younger Americans get news about politics and government, social media look to be the local TV of the Millennial generation. About six-in-ten online Millennials (61%) report getting political news on Facebook in a given week, a much larger percentage than …
The Violence Against Women Act: Overview, Legislation, and Federal Funding, Lisa N. Sacco, Analyst in Illicit Drugs and Crime Policy. May 26, 2015. “In February 2013, Congress passed legislation (Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013; P.L. 113-4) that reauthorized most of the programs under VAWA, among other things. The VAWA reauthorization also amended and …
CRS – An Overview of the Employment-Population Ratio, Sarah A. Donovan, Analyst in Labor Policy. May 27, 2015. “The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) defines the employment-population ratio as the ratio of total civilian employment to the civilian noninstitutional population. Simply put, it is the portion of the population that is employed. The ratio is …
CRS – Overview of Constitutional Challenges to NSA Collection Activities, Edward C. Liu, Legislative Attorney; Andrew Nolan, Legislative Attorney, Richard M. Thompson II, Legislative Attorney. May 21, 2015. “Beginning in summer 2013, media reports of foreign intelligence activities conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA) have been widely published. The reports have focused on two …
The Federal Grand Jury, Charles Doyle, Senior Specialist in American Public Law. May 7, 2015. “The federal grand jury exists to investigate crimes against the United States and to secure the constitutional right of grand jury indictment. Its responsibilities require broad powers. As an arm of the U.S. District Court which summons it, upon whose …
Steven Aftergood – Secrecy News: “U.S. intelligence spending remains at the frontier of national security classification and declassification policy, as some new scraps of intelligence budget information are divulged, most other information is withheld, and a simmering demand for greater disclosure persists in Congress and elsewhere. Last month the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) released heavily …
CRS – Congressional Primer on Responding to Major Disasters and Emergencies. Francis X. McCarthy, Analyst in Emergency Management Policy; Jared T. Brown, Analyst in Emergency Management and Homeland Security Policy. May 19, 2015. “The principles of disaster management assume a leadership role by the local, tribal, and state governments with the federal government providing coordinated …
