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Several of the programs Snowden revealed are authorized under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act. The 2008 law was scheduled to sunset on December 31, but in a last-ditch effort Thursday, Congress extend its authority through January 19.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, believes that the authorization doesn't really expire until April, leaving lawmakers several months to either reform or strengthen the provision. Hanging in the balance is the legal framework the government largely relies on to conduct mass surveillance of foreigners, and Americans who communicate with them. Which makes it all the more concerning that the fight over Section 702's future has taken place largely in the dark.
Source : Congress Is Debating Warrantless Surveillance in the Dark
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 25 2017, @07:20AM
Even my so called 'liberal' parents, who were like the hippie equivalent of hipsters, have basically started saying 'if you don't have anything to hide...' or 'we're too old to worry about that'. At the same time they get offended when I suggest that maybe if they are no longer going to help make the system better they should be shoved in a vat with all the other old useless people and made into biodiesel, so they can fuel the next generation's carbon footprint, even though that is a very real and possible step from where we are now, if Germany's rise and fall from power are any indication. And keep in mind Germany had an incomplete surveillance state system, as did East Germany after them (although they and others were obviously quite effective in cementing social repression for the average person.)
And that doesn't get into conservative friends and family, who even if they didn't like Trump during the primaries are now talking as though he is the walking messiah, and still talking about how much worse things would be with Clinton and completely ignoring how much better or worse they could have been under other candidates. Quite a few of them were vehemently pro-Cruz for instance, because they essentially want America as a conservative evangelical christian state, even the ones who profess to be Libertarians choosing candidates more along party lines than along actual political beliefs.
America may be a ship that can be righted, but it will not be righted within my generation. And since I neither want to teach my children to skirt the laws, nor to bow down to an unjust authority, I intend to depart America soon, formally renounce my citizenship and do what is necesssary to build a nation my own children can be proud of. Because my parents, grandparents and ancestors immemorial have failed to do that in what remains of America.