Mass surveillance

The Surveillance State Quietly Lost a Major Court Case

Republicans are publicly howling at the U.S. surveillance panopticon now that it ensnared Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. But it’s hard to believe they’ll do much to actually constrain it. When they controlled Congress, whatever Trump-prompted hesitancy Republicans had about the government’s broadest and most intrusive activities dissolved when it was time to renew the authorities underlying them for another five years. They joined congressional Democrats in resurrecting those authorities, continuing an act of genuine bipartisanship that ravenously eats away at Americans’ freedom.

Relief may come instead from the courts. A little-noticed ruling earlier this month from a federal appellate court took a modest step toward curbing the FBI’s practice of searching—warrantless—for Americans’ data inside the National Security Agency’s dragnets ostensibly aimed at foreigners. Congress may be disinclined to close what’s known as the “backdoor search provision,” but there’s a renewed chance the courts might.