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ARL Views

ARL Supports Amash-Conyers Amendment to End Bulk Collection Under Section 215

Last Updated on July 24, 2013, 12:52 pm ET

An amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill proposed by Representatives Justin Amash (R-MI) and John Conyers (D-MI) would return Section 215 to a reasonable scope, allowing the collection of important information about suspected terrorists but barring large-scale collection of information about innocent Americans. The Association of Research Libraries strongly supports this amendment, which would curtail the National Security Agency’s (NSA) program to collect the phone records of millions of Americans.

Section 215 is often referred to as the ‘library records provision,’ because libraries have been sounding the alarm about its massive scope for years. The breadth of the statute made overreach nearly inevitable; revelations about the NSA’s bulk collection of information about innocent Americans makes reform imperative.

The Amash-Conyers Amendment is a rare opportunity to send a strong, bipartisan message to the NSA that its surveillance activities have gone too far. ARL applauds Representatives Amash and Conyers and urges other Representatives to join them in voting to restore balance to the NSA’s surveillance practices.

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