NSA ends its bulk collection of phone records. Washington Post.

Seal of the NSA. US Government. 

The NSA is ending it's bulk collection of phone records as of today. Washington Post. The controversial program, first exposed by Edward Snowden, gathered the records of millions of phone calls each day. Though content was not recorded, supposedly, metadata, such as who is being called and how long people talked, were collected. Congress passed the USA Freedom Act to end the controversial program. Under the new law, the NSA will need a court order to go after the phone metadata of suspected terrorists. The program, begun under George Bush and continued under Barack Obama, was extremely secret, to the point that most people in Congress did not know how far the data collection went. The data collected by the NSA will be held onto for some time yet due to pending litigation. 

My Comment:

This is a big story that I am guessing will fly under the radar. After the rise of ISIS, the NSA scandal definitely took a back seat. But it's important to note that the program never really stopped. The NSA still looks at our records. This new legislation did get rid of the phone metadata program but that is far from the only program out there. It's a good first step, but as far as I am concerned there is much more work that needs to be done. 

Of much more concern to me is the various other programs that the NSA has right now which aren't being scaled back. Most importantly, as far as I know the NSA still collects vast amounts of data about internet usage. Of the two, I know which scares me more. Phone metadata would not tell the NSA much about me. I almost never use the phone and when I do it's just to call friends and family. All they would learn from me is the fact that I don't call people all that much. 

Internet usage is a much more valuable resource. By monitoring my internet usage the NSA could find pretty much anything about me. Obviously, I can't complain about the fact that my political beliefs can be found on my blog. It's public after all. But my social media accounts are bit more private and it's possible they could find out something I don't want people to know. Ditto for my browsing history. If someone from the NSA had a problem with me, they could use my internet history or social media accounts to hurt me and hurt me bad. And I think that is true for everyone in America. Everyone has something about their internet history they would rather not have the rest of the world know about. 

So why care about this when most of the spying going on is against terrorists? After all, ISIS and al-Qaeda are very active right now and are a major threat. Well, for one thing, it seems that ISIS and al-Qaeda have switched tactics recently. They no longer plan attacks on the open internet and rarely use cell phones at all on the strategic level. Instead they use encrypted programs that the NSA can't crack. That switch in tactics makes NSA spying almost completely useless. I'd go so far as to say that the entire program is pointless now. The NSA isn't going to be able to crack the encryption and they shouldn't even try because if they do manage it, 20 other apps will rise to replace them. It's a war they can't win.

And I have never been convinced that the NSA programs were being used just against suspected Islamic terrorists. I have always been concerned that the temptation to use the NSA as a weapon against the American people would be too hard to resist. Already there have been reports of this kind of data collection being used against run of the mill criminals. How long until it will be used against people that disagree with the government? 

I think my worry about the NSA depends on who wins the 2016 election. Though I think the Republicans are just as likely to abuse the programs as Democrats, the fact of the mater is that if the Republicans abuse it, I'm not likely to be a target. Sure that's a selfish interpretation, but it's the one I've made. I do think that if Hillary Clinton gets elected, she will abuse this system. She only cares about power and I don't think she can be trusted to be in control of this program. I don't really trust much of the Republican field with this power either, but at least they won't be targeting me. Rand Paul is about the only guy I can see reigning in the NSA and he doesn't have a chance of winning at this point...