NSA gets the go-ahead for another 180 days of mass surveillance

"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" — "the more things change, the more they stay the same" — wrote Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) Judge Michael Mosman in his Tuesday ruling that the National Security Agency (NSA) can continue mass surveillance on millions of innocent Americans for another 180 days.

Following Sen. Rand Paul's (R-Ky.) charge against the renewal of the Patriot Act, Congress passed the USA Freedom Act, a more limited reform that allowed the NSA 180 final days of spying before transferring mass metadata collection to phone companies, which the NSA can query. In response, civil libertarian advocacy group FreedomWorks filed suit to block those additional months of surveillance, an effort which Mosman's ruling rejected. Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is still pursuing an injunction against the NSA's 180 days of spying at another court.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a consistent ally of Paul in his opposition to warrantless mass surveillance, criticized the FISA decision, arguing that there is "no reason for the executive branch to restart bulk collection, even for a few months." He added, "This illegal dragnet surveillance violated Americans' rights for 14 years without making our country any safer."

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