I'vw been thinking about this pretty hard this summer - I've been involved in some local tech activist stuff. My take on it is as runs: Fundamentally, what's

I'vw been thinking about this pretty hard this summer - I've been involved in some local tech activist stuff. My take on it is as runs: Fundamentally, what's needed here is the ability to have confidence that the intelligence system is not overstepping its bounds. The US founders' framework for building that confidence is to have multiple parts of power, whose interest is roughly aligned with countering each other. So in the case of the TLAs: * The judicial system for warrants needs to be open. No secret courts. Cases' contents might be sealed; the existence of cases should not be. Secret courts are not new, and they have been a bad idea for a long time. * The policies for data collection need to managed by Congress; no policy about this should set by the executive branch. The policies need to be open and debated. Should we take foreign intelligence on our own citizens? * Comprehensive reports to Congress. I believe Zoe Lofgren cited a report that was under a page about the NSA activity. That's entirely disingenuous and disrespectful of the representatives of the people. The other thing that needs to be done is in the polls: Legislators that seek to legalize snooping need to be replaced with ones that don't. And finally, the thought process needs to be that there's a 4th Amendment rights protection movement and organization, which will work over a long timeframe (generations). There's no band-aid act that will fix this once and for all, this entire thing is an upswelling from overprotective and anti-risk mindsets. It comes out of deep into the roots of what's considered acceptable risk. The privacy/4th amendment movement is going to have to plan for advocating higher risks, more freedom, more liberty, combined with more laws about privacy, along with determining how to build change in mindset over time (it's called propaganda or, more politely, marketing). Privacy implications need to be worked out, discussed, brought to light in fiction, philosophy, law, debates, etc. The mindset of fear and "never again" and "risk is unacceptable" has to be broken in order to make mass surveillance a non-starter. Worse - The reality is that privacy is going to be dead with the Internet of Things coming online. The question is, what is acceptable and legal to monitor and record? For myself, I believe that we need to have stringent personal data laws forcing deletion of consumer data unless required for a service, as well as requiring warrants for any data collection not already given to the government (i.e., irs filing). The 2nd Amendment groups are in this for the long run. I don't see how the privacy groups can afford to do otherwise. edit: I would enjoy discussing this with interested parties, particularly activists and activist-leaning people. My email is in my profile.