As chances of NSA reform fade, opinions remain strong

A total of 19 months after NSA contractor Edward Snowden disclosed details of the National Security Agencys massive surveillance program, the debate has simmered down and a legislative fix looks unlikely.

At the heart of Snowdens disclosures was that the NSA has access to meta-data of millions of phone calls and is also able to access emails, transcripts from online chats and troves of other data directly from internet companies.

While several bills have been introduced and even voted on in Congress, a legislative fix looks unlikely.

In July of 2013, the Amash-Conyers Amendment, sponsored by Rep. Justin Amash, R-Michigan, and Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan, would have effectively ended NSA collection of data, but narrowly failed the House of Representatives by a vote of 217-205. 211 votes were needed for the bill to pass that day.

More recently, the USA Freedom Act, which would have made some reforms passed the House by a vote of 303-121 in May. Amash sponsored the original bill, but voted against it because it was watered down after changes were made and in his opinion, did not go far enough in reforms. While it passed the House, it failed in the Senate in November, when it could not receive 60 votes to move forward.

One of the bills sponsor, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, blamed the failure on other Senators who were fear mongering, thus stalling debate on the bill.

The program has seen some challenges in court. Several district courts have heard the case against the program, one judge in the D.C. district court called the program likely unconstitutional and almost Orwellian, but other courts have issued opinions in favor of the program.

Dirk Deam, senior lecturer in political science at Iowa State, said the court challenges will likely not spur any changes, rather it is up to Congress.

Itll be up to Congress. At the root of this is application of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is an act of Congress, Deam said. Almost all the issues surrounding things that have been leaked are connected to FISA, so to the extent that people are going to react to that, theyre going to have to [make changes] through legislation.

Several students at Iowa State said they do not approve of the program.

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As chances of NSA reform fade, opinions remain strong