As public outrage continues to grow at the NSA surveillance state, the efforts at Congressional reform still seem on the distant horizon, with a lot of obstacles to getting anything done in a timely fashion.
That’s giving privacy laws a shot in the arm on the state level, with many state representatives seeing a chance to get out in front of the scandal while the national legislature remains deadlocked.
The Pennsylvania legislature is moving forward to investigate the NSA, and at least 10 other states have resolutions aimed at restricting data collection, particularly as it is liable to end up in the NSA’s hands.
Microsoft, one of the first PRISM cooperators, was quick to reject the idea of state-level reforms, saying that online privacy was a “national or an international issue” and that state laws would be “counterproductive” and inconvenient for them personally.
