Of patriots and freedom, we never get our way!

The Patriot Act wasn’t renewed, and that’s a good thing.

The USA Freedom Act passed, and that leaves a bitter aftertaste in my mouth.

As a friend of mine put it, the new act seems Orwellian: it sounds good, but upon closer inspection, it’s just as corrupt as the Patriot Act.

The Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-collection and Online Monitoring Act, or USA Freedom Act (I’d hate to be the intern who had to make that acronym work), is the legislation passed by Congress that took over when portions of the Patriot Act expired earlier this week.

The main hallmark of the USA Freedom act is that it specifically prohibits the collection of data that was allowed under the Patriot Act’s Section 215.

That section allowed for dragnet-style collection of phone metadata. Metadata is information like phone numbers, who called, how long, and where calls are being made, but it doesn’t include what was actually said.

That dragnet collection was authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, up until the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second District ruled that the NSA (National Security Administration) overreached when it used the court’s broad interpretation of Section 215 to gather that information. Then, on Tuesday, Section 215 expired and was no longer up for interpretation by anyone.

Another hallmark of the USA Freedom Act is what it doesn’t do.

Sorry, but things are about to get wonky. The new act doesn’t address the core of mass surveillance; specifically, it doesn’t do anything to Section 702 of the Patriot Act, one of the main legal arguments that the U.S. government uses to justify its collection of data. That section doesn’t expire until 2017 and it allows the government to collect Internet content.

Then there’s Executive Order 12333. This order, signed by President Reagan in 1981, provides the legal justification for spying on foreigners and the mass collection of their data.

The problem with this is often times data is collected from American citizens, which is expressly prohibited by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

But hey, what would government be if it didn’t give its citizens the old switcheroo every once in a while?

In all seriousness, surveillance of any kind is just a bit gross, as I described last week.

When I think of the actual act of data collection, all I can imagine is a bunch of nerds sitting in a big black building near Washington D.C. poring over people’s most intimate and most inconsequential activities.

I picture a lovesick or heartbroken stereotype of a nerd cruising the net for some good porn.

It’s voyeurism taken to its most extreme. That’s right, you read it here first folks: the United States government is kinky, it likes to watch, and it has a problem.

The next time you hear about mass surveillance, I urge you stop and think for a moment about the gross nerd half a country away getting his jollies from that sexting session you had last night.

Food for thought.