When the Patriot Act was sunset it was replaced with the even more Orwellian sounding USA Freedom Act, which on face value includes better safeguards. It's hard

When the Patriot Act was sunset it was replaced with the even more Orwellian sounding USA Freedom Act, which on face value includes better safeguards. It's hard to know if that has improved matters as we have little insight into the government's legal interpretations or real world application of the written law. Even without these two laws it's likely government spying would go on unchanged, a large amount of the domestic surveillance is done under the 2008 FISA amendment. For example, the NSA Prism project where they have direct access to the user data of major big tech companies in the USA, that's authorized under the 2008 FISA amendment not Patriot Act.