It must be nice being the government. You get to make the laws, enforce the laws, and decided whether or not the laws are legal. So it should come as no surprise that after a very lengthy and deliberate investigation into the actions of its own surveillance apparatus the government has decided that everything it did was nice and legal:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The National Security Agency programs that collect huge volumes of Internet data within the United States pass constitutional muster and employ “reasonable” safeguards designed to protect the rights of Americans, an independent privacy and civil liberties board has found.
In a report released Tuesday night, the bipartisan, five-member Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, appointed by President Barack Obama, largely endorsed a set of NSA surveillance programs that have provoked worldwide controversy since they were disclosed last year by former NSA systems administrator Edward Snowden. However, they urged new internal intelligence agency safeguards designed to further guard against misuse.
First of all I’m glad that we now know that everything the NSA did was legal. Talk about a huge elephant in the room that was in need of being addressed! Second of all, I’m glad the government is finally getting more efficient. Why have a massive investigation involving multiple departments and every member of Congress when you can just grab five random dudes and tell them to take care of everything? Hopefully we’re witnessing the beginning of a new age of government efficiency because it would be nice to just appoint a few guys to fuck us over instead of paying thousands of people to do the same.