"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.
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