Congress allowed Section 215 of the Patriot Act to sunset in June, terminating one of the absurd legal justifications for one of the NSA's domestic mass surveillance programs. Read the rest “Secret court will let NSA do mass surveillance for another six months”

With the sunsetting of Section 215 of the Patriot Act and the passage of the USA Freedom Act, Congress has, for the first time since the 1970s, put limits on the surveillance powers of America's spooks. Read the rest “USA Freedom Act: the good, the bad, and what's next”

For the first time since its passage in 2001, Congress has declined to renew section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, which provided for mass, warrantless surveillance -- now what happens? Read the rest “PATRIOT Act expires -- now what?”

The most outstanding and urgent hour of audio you'll hear this week is the On the Media history of the PATRIOT Act (MP3), and the most important website you'll visit this week is Sunset the PATRIOT Act, which lets you do something about it. Read the rest “The PATRIOT Act is uglier than you thought, and what to do about it”

"It's only metadata," is the catch-all excuse for mass surveillance -- after all, if spies aren't capturing what your message says why should you care if they're getting who sent it, what its subject line is, where you and the sender are, and everything you do before and after receiving the message? Read the rest “How metadata compromises you”

After an all-night session, Rand Paul [R-KY] and Ron Wyden [D-OR] tag-teamed majority leader Mitch McConnell [R-KY] and beat him to the mat -- he has abandoned the current legislative effort to extend section 215 of the Patriot Act, which authorizes mass surveillance and is set to expire on June 1. Read the rest “Ron Wyden and Rand Paul kill the Patriot Act (ish)”