Marcy Wheeler: Patriot Act’s Absurd New Spawn: Just When You Thought it Couldn’t Get Any Worse

September 4, 2014 | Congress may be preparing to reinforce two horrible FISA Court decisions and an abusive government search with no debate in the coming weeks: a decision to give national security orders unlimited breadth, one making it legal for the government to investigate Americans for activities protected under the First Amendment, and the FBI’s “back door” searches of Americans’ communication content collected under the FISA Amendment Act Section 702 authority.

On Tuesday, the ACLU and the Department of Justice argued about the legality [3] of the NSA’s phone dragnet program before the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. Much of the discussion focused on the implications of the government’s theories that it can collect all phone records in the United States based on a claim they are “relevant” to standing terrorism investigations. “You can collect everything there is to know about everybody and have it all in one big government cloud,” said Judge Gerard Lynch, describing the implications of the government’s theories to Assistant Attorney General Stuart Delery.