After today’s failed Senate votes on extending the Patriot Act Section 215, they joined the House in a week-long recess. There’s a possibility of another vote attempt of the evening of Sunday, May 31.
Problem is, the law itself expires Monday, June 1, and with the likelihood that they won’t have any legal cover at all that morning, the administration says it has already begun winding down the NSA telephone surveillance program.
The Justice Department had talked about the shut-down of the NSA program if they didn’t get the extension this week, and while at the time many saw it as a political ploy, the holiday recesses mean they’re obliged to follow through on dismantling the scheme.
Senate leaders downplayed the seriousness of the moves made so far, calling them a stunt for the sake of lobbying, and saying that the actual metadata database won’t begin being shut down until 4 pm on the 31st.
The White House claimed Section 215 allowed them the bulk collection of Americans’ telephone metadata, something they’d been doing for years before that fact was leaked by Edward Snowden. Since then, a US Appeals Court ruled even Section 215 didn’t grant this broad power.
Despite the court ruling, the program has kept going, and officials in both the administration and Congress have treated the extension of Section 215 as a de facto extension of the NSA program.
In the end, however, American opposition to the surveillance state appears to have kept just enough of the Senate away from the yes votes to extend Section 215, even with the watered-down reforms offered in the USA Freedom Act. Whether the administration will follow through on ending the program remains to be seen, but absent an act of Congress, it’s hard to see how they can avoid it.
Considering this thing has been under construction since at least the 80s when it was going under the guise of John Pointdexter's Total Information Awareness program and by now has tentacles that stretch to who knows where, I find it extremely hard to believe that all this infrastructure will simply be turned off, dismantled and abandoned due to some passing petty squabble over something silly like the limits of the law. Even if this head of the hydra is cut off, you can be damn sure this unholy beast isn't dead.
One should keep in mind Poindexter's Total Information Awareness (name change to Terrorism Information Awareness when Congress began legislating to kill it) and the fact that after Congress defunded it in 2004 and officially ended the program, the DoD dropped the program into the memory hole…and turned it over to the NSA and out of the American public's (and Congress', btw) view – until Snowden screwed the pooch and blew the doors wide open. BTW, Ron Wyden and Russ Feingold were leading the charge to kill TIA.
The point being there is too much invested in this program that even if legislated out of existence, the likelihood that the NSA will actually stop collecting the data is slim to none. I'm just surprised they haven't used the "look how many people it would put on unemployment" ploy yet.
I greatly fear this is the perfect timing right now for these bastards to pull a phony balony false flag blamed on ISIS, then watch them pass the patriot act on steroids. The American Sheeple will fall for it again hook line and sinker, they always do because they are stupider than a can of paint.
See how this works. Really so obvious. The forces of pure evil will stop at nothing to get their way. Way too much money involved in the Military Industrial Surveillence Complex. Think of all the compaines sucking the taxpayer tit supplying all the goods and services to spy on all of us, so that they know who we are and exactly what we think of them.
KEEP UP THE PRESSURE. As soon as we hear that the Senate has returned, we have to hound them mercilessly. Keep calling, keep emailing. They have to know that they will be tossed out if they vote for the extension.
Yup, that will work for sure. While everybody's distracting themselves with the sideshow of voting in another bunch of compliant dummies, Our Dear Leaders will just keep on spying on Americans and murdering foreigners.
nice idea, but they won't be tossed out and they know it. One or two might, in "purple districts" with large metropolitan areas but generally rural America is OK with spying on Americans if it will supposedly keep them safe.
This article leaves me very confused. What’s with the winding down phrase? It’s computer programs you just turn the electronics off and delete the program.
Then there’s this even more confusing remark: “the actual metadata database won’t begin being shut down until 4 pm on the 31st.” If the reason for the so-called shut down is because they don’t have legal authority to conduct the open ended spying shouldn’t the metadata database itself be destroyed? Then there’s the agreements with the other five eyes that spy on us and give that collected data to our domestic spys – so what’s changed here?
All excellent points. If they knew that this was a reel possibility, why did they not taked the steps before, to impliment it quickly?
But the last point is the most important. If our agencies are prevented by law (what a joke) from doing something, ….why hell, they'll just outsource the job. Simple! Problem solved. One would figure they would have had in place the outsourcing of the program to the other five eyes coconspirators (The UK, Canada, New Zealand, Austrailia and the US…..Oceania in Orwell's 1984).
Since the corrupt shadow government works outside of whatever the morons and traitors in Congress/WH/Department are doing, I suspect the NSA will continue to spy and collect metadata and content of all innocent Americans whether program #so and so will run out or not.
If this act is not renewed, i may believe govt surveillance will stop when i see the Bluffdale, Utah facility dismantled.
Now we need to know what's going to happen to the data that has already been collected. The program will be "shut off" but it'll still exist. Looks to me like it's not going away, just going into hibernation.