NSA Stops Collecting Phone Records-- My Ass, They Did

Sweeping US surveillance powers, enjoyed by the National Security Agency since the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks, shut down at midnight after a dramatic Senate showdown in which even the NSA’s biggest supporters conceded that substantial reforms were inevitable.

Almost two years after the whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed to the Guardian that the Patriot Act was secretly being used to justify the collection of phone records from millions of Americans, critics of bulk surveillance went further than expected and forced the end of a range of other legal authorities covered by the Bush-era Patriot Act as well.

I submit, Gentle Reader, that only a fool would believe that the NSA has stopped accumulating phone records that. They have the infrastructure in place to do it and do you really believe that some NSA tech has shrugged and thrown the breaker on that? I wrote as much almost two years ago and I think it still stands.

The various legislators can bloviate and speechify all they want to. Congress can pass or not pass laws. The American Stasi will do what the fuck they want, probably because they think there isn't going to be another Snowden or Manning. Rand Paul is exactly right when he warns that the FISA court will rubber-stamp whatever the NSA wants, for it's what they do. Assuming that the NSA bothers to even ask the FISA court, which they've been known to bypass before.

The only real change, for right now, is that we can pretty much tell the Feebies with their prying "national security letters" (most of which had no relationship to national security) to fuck off and die. But that'll change.