Actually, mass surveillance was stopped because Congress allowed section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act to sunset (finally!) which meant that the NSA could no longer maintain their legal fiction that justified their program.
Ironically they are going to restart the program because of the USA Freedom Act [1], which allows for a 180 day window within which to transition over to the new requirements.
The USA Freedom Act does a few things to prevent the NSA from doing what they have been doing:
Firstly, it modifies the part of the Patriot Act that allowed for free and unfettered access to business and personal documents (the "library records" provision") by changing FISA to only allow for a warrant to be granted if:
(i) there are reasonable grounds to
believe that the call detail records sought
to be produced based on the specific selection
term required under subparagraph (A) are relevant
to such investigation; and
(ii) there are facts giving rise to a
reasonable, articulable suspicion that such
specific selection term is associated with a
foreign power or an agent of a foreign power
(which is ironic, given this was ALWAYS the intent of FISA and I'd argue the original Patriot Act!)
It also makes sure that the NSA can't go on a fishing expedition - they have to have actual grounds to capture the information. They can't grab every single record now, because the requirement is now that the warrant has to show that they are only "using call detail records with a direct connection to such specific selection term as the basis for production of a second set of call detail records".
It's worse for the NSA now, because they said that they needed the records in perpetuity for data mining, because of the Act now says that they have to adopt "minimization procedures that require the prompt destruction of all call detail records produced under the order that the Government determines are not foreign intelligence information", and and they must "destroy all call detail records produced under the order as prescribed by such procedures."
There's more awesome stuff in the Act, but I gotta get to work.
Sadly, there seems to be a big difference between "determines are not foreign intelligence information" and "does not determine is foreign intelligence information." Oops, we didn't have the resources to verify that this wasn't a target, so we'll just keep it around until it's proven innocent.
Or am I just being paranoid? I don't really know anything about this.
Ironically they are going to restart the program because of the USA Freedom Act [1], which allows for a 180 day window within which to transition over to the new requirements.
The USA Freedom Act does a few things to prevent the NSA from doing what they have been doing:
Firstly, it modifies the part of the Patriot Act that allowed for free and unfettered access to business and personal documents (the "library records" provision") by changing FISA to only allow for a warrant to be granted if:
(which is ironic, given this was ALWAYS the intent of FISA and I'd argue the original Patriot Act!)It also makes sure that the NSA can't go on a fishing expedition - they have to have actual grounds to capture the information. They can't grab every single record now, because the requirement is now that the warrant has to show that they are only "using call detail records with a direct connection to such specific selection term as the basis for production of a second set of call detail records".
It's worse for the NSA now, because they said that they needed the records in perpetuity for data mining, because of the Act now says that they have to adopt "minimization procedures that require the prompt destruction of all call detail records produced under the order that the Government determines are not foreign intelligence information", and and they must "destroy all call detail records produced under the order as prescribed by such procedures."
There's more awesome stuff in the Act, but I gotta get to work.
1. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/02/nsa-surveillance-co...