https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/secret-court-rules-fbi...
The issue that your article discusses is searches about Americans conducted on data collected from non-Americans outside the US (via Section 702). This is not mass surveillance on Americans.
The only program that collected Americans' data en masse in Snowden's documents was phone metadata collection, but it would be a huge stretch to label the way the documents described the data as being used as "mass surveillance." It certainly doesn't paint a picture of intelligence agencies run amok spying on everybody without regard to the law and without oversight.
.. to the point of unconstituainality, using a database with records of most Americans in it.
That is definition "mass surveillance on Americans".
How did you make up this "records of most Americans in it" claim? How would communications between targeted non-citizens outside the US with other non-citizens outside the US contain records of most Americans? To understand the article you posted, you have to understand the terms in it first.
Since I'm being rate-limited, some responses to the comment below (if you want me to reply normally, send a few upvotes to reset the rate limiter):
> The NSA believes it only has to be accurate "51%" of the time, with no court oversight that they're hitting that goal.
No, it doesn't. Where does that claim come from?
>The court above had found out that the FBI routinely didn't follow it
Follow what? You're confusing 702 collection, which requires showing that the target is a non-citizen outside the US communicating with the same, with querying of that non-American data for American identifiers, which merely requires sufficient documentation for oversight. You very clearly don't understand the article you posted.
The court above had found out that the FBI routinely didn't follow it, to the point of an unconstitutional view of the program as a whole. They weren't following the rules you're laying out.
> The NSA believes it only has to be accurate "51%" of the time, with no court oversight that they're hitting that goal.
No, it doesn't. Where does that claim come from?
>The court above had found out that the FBI routinely didn't follow it
Follow what? You're confusing 702 collection, which requires showing that the target is a non-citizen outside the US communicating with the same, with querying of that non-American data for American identifiers, which merely requires sufficient documentation for oversight. You very clearly don't understand the article you posted.
On the other hand, the intelligence community IG report mandated by the FISA Amendments Act that leaked and was published just after, and almost certainly because of, the publication of the Snowden leaks did paint such a picture. So, you know, there's that.
Of course, while much less detailed a picture than the IG report, so did the whole trickle of official revelations and leaks leading up to the FISA Amendments Act, which overtly sought to both legalize some of and control other mass surveillance, some of which was publicly acknowledged and more of which had to have been briefed to members to have motivated the act.
In what way does it show the NSA having access to everybody's communications as Snowden alleged? Your comment is full of underspecified insinuations with no concrete facts to back them up.
That wasn't the claim, the claim was—in your words—that it showed “deep state intelligence agencies run amok illegally spying on Americans”.
> Your comment is full of underspecified insinuations
The level of specification was set by your original description.