[Timber Rattler]

Congress approved sweeping changes Tuesday to surveillance laws enacted after the Sept. 11 attacks, eliminating the National Security Agency's disputed bulk phone-records collection program and replacing it with a more restrictive measure to keep the records in phone companies' hands.

And therein lies the rub. The law now burdens the phone companies with keeping all of this stuff and making it available to Big Brother on request. That should have been scrapped too. Now everybody's phone bills will be spiking to pay for the storage.

[FreeInWV]

What we need now is a criminal law passed for people that abuse it for any use other than terrorism. Wanna use it for personal, financial or political reasons? Get life in prison without parole! Mandatory minimum sentences. And have it audited by an independent agency every 6 months.