Donny Shaw at Mediate examines who supports the representatives who voted for USA FREEDOM and finds something interesting:
Members of the House who voted for the USA Freedom Act received, on average, more than 2.2 as much money from the defense industry during the last election cycle than did the members of the House who voted against it.
That’s according to an analysis I conducted of campaign contributions data that is made available by OpenSecrets. The members of the House who voted for it got, on average, about $38,000 from the defense companies over the two-year period while the members who voted against it got about $17,000.
Intelligence contractors, which largely consist of big defense industry organizations like Lockheed Martin, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Northrop Grumman, account for 70 percent of the government’s Intelligence budget. The Intelligence budget is classified, but it’s estimated to be about $100 billion annually, so these contractors probably earn about $70 billion per year from these programs. They have a clear financial stake in perpetuating and expanding the government’s surveillance activities, which is exactly what I and others believe USA Freedom Act would do.
Opponents of the Surveillance State should ask themselves if the USA FREEDOM Act reined in the surveillance state would it get such strong support from the military-surveillance-industrial complex's favorite "representatives"?
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PDFTags: USA Freedom, Survielance State