So pre-9/11 the NSA wasn't allowed to spy on Americans (in most cases), so instead they paid the UK's GCHQ to spy on Americans for them and then relayed the intelligence to the NSA for analysis. This was and still is a perfectly legal loophole. There are no limits on cooperation with other intelligence agencies. When 9/11 happened the NSA got effectively a blank cheque and asked to increase intelligence gathering significantly, so instead of continuing the GCHQ misdirection they simply expanded spying within the US and then legalised it (via executive order at the time, law later).
So the NSA was spying on Americans in the 1990s, they just had to do more legal maneuvering to do it. It just got significantly worse in the 2000s and they dropped even pretending that they weren't. Even if a stronger law outlawed spying on Americans, you'd just see them go back to the GCHQ way.
PS - A lot of Americans seem to want the NSA spying on "foreigners" without realising that that effectively opens the door to the NSA spying on Americans. That way a call between a US citizen and anyone from abroad can be listened in on.
PPS - Don't even get me started on the NSA's spying on behalf of US corporations, that's a whole other can of worms.
If the budget remains the same or even increases the following year, then clearly something is not right there and the NSA will just use that money to "keep" the program in some other place and through some other methods.
Unfortunately, since the "Defund the NSA" bill that almost passed the House after the first Snowden revelations, I haven't seen any discussion about doing that. The civil liberties organizations should've pushed for a similar law within 3 months afterwards and ensure it passes then.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/04...
That's not a rational argument.
no it isn't, EO12333 disallows the intelligence community from asking someone else to do something that they cannot do
It's like the recent Smith-Mundt reforms. You no longer have to prevent propaganda from reaching the American public. You just have to not intend for it to reach the American public.
oh you mean if material spontaneously appeared? yeah... good luck explaining that one
Yes, the USA Freedom Act is limited. Yes, it doesn't change all the things we'd all like to see changed. "The perfect is the enemy of the good." It's at least movement in the right direction. Let's try celebrating that, instead of (or at least along with) bitching that it's not movement far enough.
Slogans are easy, what's hard is recognizing the difference between political theater and meaningful change.
America is tumbling into the abyss of tyranny and people celebrate.
I'm saying, "Ooh, look: teeny, tiny step back from the level of tyranny we had yesterday. Nice!" I would hope anyone who hates tyranny would see merit in that.
Now, yes, if that's all we get, then being pissed and — more importantly, doing something about it — is warranted. But I choose to look at this as a first step, while you and others appear to regard it as appeasement and a pat on the head.
Not much I can do for you there.
Dismissing criticism with a flippant "perfect is the enemy of the good" is lazy and thoughtless.
The government has shown no interest in curtailing the vast surveillance apparatus it has built, nor does it show interest in investigating its own abuses of such power.
When people praise such drivel as the freedom act it only sets us all back on the road to tyranny. So yeah, your perspective is detrimental to improving the dire circumstances we find ourselves.
Thanks.
EDIT: You know what I think has people the most pissed off in all of this? That their illusions about America having been a particularly "free" country in the first place are being shattered.
I'm reminded of nothing quite so much as the virulence I've seen in former, incredibly ardent Obama supporters, when they realized how much of a tool he actually was.
Those of us who knew he was a tool from the beginning? Not so pissed when his true colors came out.
(And, no, I'm not a Republican, nor a Libertarian. I just realized a long time ago how corrupt the American political process is, and engage with it with that principle in mind.)
This leads to a question: in the movie Citizenfour, Snowden explains that the NSA uses british surveillance system when they need information that they can't legally obtain in the US. I'm wondering, under this new "freedom act", can the NSA legally query the british system to access information about US citizen?