US Data Collection Stopped for Two Days and the World Didn’t End

On June 1, key provisions of the Patriot Act expired. That bill was used to justify the NSA’s collection of metadata, and many panicked that as surveillance went dark, terrorism would flourish. But in the few days the agency was forced to stop spying, the sky didn’t fall, and according to Daniel Castro, that’s proof that it should end altogether.

"These provisions actually expired and we had a period when, in theory, should have actually stopped," Daniel Castro, Vice President of information Technology and Innovation Foundation, tells Radio Sputnik. "In those two days it doesn’t appear that anything potentially negative has occurred."

US lawmakers scrambled to pass the USA Freedom Act, which reauthorizes the NSA to resume its data collection for the next six months. During that time, the agency will hopefully wind down its operation to comply with a federal court.

But that may not be the case.

"As we know, the amount of data in the world is continually growing, so the NSA looks at this as an opportunity to expand its reach."

Castro also points out that the intelligence community has yet to prove that its domestic surveillance operations have prevented a single terrorist attack.

"If we had spent more money on a couple of surveillance cameras instead of collecting all this useless data, we would have been able to solve [the Boston Marathon bombing] sooner."

As Americans hold their breath, waiting to see if any true reform will come to the NSA, it’s important to remember: government doesn’t get smaller. Government only grows bigger and larger.