Polls show the American public strongly against NSA surveillance against them, but actually getting them to stop depends in a large part on Congress, and a battle that is looming between spying advocates and critics.
The Intelligence Committee chairs in both the House and Senate are eager to back the NSA, and are pushing a resolution, written by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D – CA), that would do materially nothing to stop the programs, and would instead seek to “tweak” the amount of transparency the American public gets about it.
On the other hand, the revelation of “social mapping” has added to concerns about the NSA’s mass tracking of American citizens, and is spawning a competing resolution from Judiaciary Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D – VT), who wants major changes including the revocation of Section 215 of the Patriot Act.
The Obama Administration has made clear that it opposes major changes, insisting NSA surveillance of American citizens is a vital part of national security. Yet while they downplay the extent of the program, repeated leaks continue to show worse and worse violations, driving calls for far greater reforms, if not a wholesale tear-down of the existing surveillance state.
Like the furor over gun control legislation where the Congress laid down for the gun lobby and did nothing, this also will fare as well. Congress for the most part does not want to change anything the spy agencies are doing, except perhaps making it more secretive and therefore won't. Those in Congress who would like to reduce or even curtail the spying will lose as they usually do. And things will drop off the media front page and things will return to "normal" again.
As with the "scandals" of Congressional moral turpitude and assorted sexually-linked exposé, they are immune to public disdain and have little to no feelings of embarrassment and feel no real pressure to resign…usually because they claim they're "human" just like everybody else.
This is a major money making machine for their budddies, so how can they cut it?
And why is Congress getting paid? They are the ones that did not get their job done — did not pass the budget. And they lecture others, they are to decide if the people are being spied on or not? They are to make major decisions affecting our lives? If it were not for their buddies that just need the money from another "little splendid war" in Syria — we would not be ridiculed by the world for supporting head-chopping monsters in Syria. Nothing — but a smell of money, motivates these people. And OUR furloughed people are just "saving" some money for more "fun" operations they have in mind.