An end to telephone snooping… for now
The US Senate, having failed to reach agreement, has allowed the expiry of three unpopular surveillance measures within the USA Patriot Act (acronym: Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism), due mainly to public pressure and the disinclination of most senators to be seen by their voters as supporting three highly unpopular measures.
Despite the director of the CIA’s anguished warnings and fear mongering, the upper house decided not to extend a midnight deadline for May 31. This is a triumph for Edward Snowden, who thanks to his revelations exposed the abuse being made of the legislative package. Sadly, Snowden remains in effective custody in a country he did not choose to be in and cannot travel, but the move does highlight the immediate need for a revision of our relationship with our governments.
So what now? As was to be expected, the US administration will try to recover at least part of its information-gathering capacity through the USA Freedom Act (acronym:Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-collection and Online Monitoring) a raft of laws dating back to 2013, and that has been rejected by Congress and the Senate several times since. The Freedom Act was originally a more balanced series of measures that provided greater privacy guarantees to the general public. But some senators, in response to the NSA’s reduced power, has been to propose amendments to the Freedom Act with the aim of weakening it and retaining some scope for action, something that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF, the leading nonprofit organization defending civil liberties in the digital world) totally opposes.
This has led to a legislative impasse, and may well lead to change in positions: if the Patriot Act has been of any use, it has been to show its inability to use the information it has obtained to prevent attacks. After several years during which the NSA has swelled in size, it is more than clear that there is no correlation between increased surveillance and prevention of terrorist attacks, and that this surveillance, although it makes it more difficult for terrorists to communicate with each other, has mainly been used to gather vast amounts of information about innocent members of the public whose most basic rights have been violated, along with the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, which in theory protects citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures and requires any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause.
As things stand, we could be about to see a possible improvement in civic rights. But we should not underestimate something that has become a major industry with powerful interests at stake, and of an unlikely change in attitude among senators, as well as the likelihood that the public will be subjected once again to indiscriminate spying, all of which means that things could change for the worse very quickly, given the current situation in the upper house.
Which means we need to be aware of how we got to this point, where at least things are being discussed, with the possibility of changes to the law and to policy. At the same time, people are more aware than ever of the dangers they face from their own governments, and that whistleblowers like Felt, Ellsberg, Manning, Assange or Snowden need protection and our support. These are people who should serve as an example to us all in a society where inertia often prevents us from acting against injustice.
The Patriot Act is dead, and the US government’s capacity to monitor and eavesdrop its citizens’ conversations has been seriously reduced, at least for the moment, and we should thank those who have contributed to this through their actions.
(En español, aquí)
