The NSA has been spying on millions of people for years, collecting texts and e-mails that are exchanged between every American citizen both inside and outside of the U.S. and they didn't need a warrant in order to collect this info. But the NSA just announced a couple of days ago that they are not going to be participating any longer in this form of spying and data collection.

Apparently that infringement upon the privacy of millions of people has now come to an official close, or at least that is how the headlines read in response to the announcement.

Privacy advocates are hailing the recent move as a triumph for civil liberties. According to the agency directly, they will no longer be collecting “certain internet communications” for the mere mention of a foreign intelligence target, they are now looking to limit that data collection to focus on communications that are sent directly to foreign targets or received directly from them.

But Wait...

Was the NSA only collecting the communications of people who simply mentioned foreign surveillance targets? No. They were attempting to collect the communications of everyone, to know what they were saying, googling, buying, who they were talking to, what places they visited, to gather enough data in order to construct their pattern of life.

This new change specifically involves the NSA upstream surveillance collection and it does not pertain to the PRISM spying program.

The NSA has been spying on hundreds of millions of people for decades and we've been lied to by officials before about these programs and the activities surrounding them. And if this recent change is truly to be regarded as a success for privacy and civil liberties then it should apply to the NSA's surveillance approach overall, meaning all of their programs.

But it looks like for now that isn't the case; this change only applies to a specific program and doesn't pertain to their spying methods overall.

The NSA credits “technological constraints” as a reason for their decision to adapt their spying agenda. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has already issued an order that approves of the NSA's plan for a much more narrow spying approach with regard to their upstream surveillance collection.

But as for their unjust spying on hundreds of millions of people via their programs like PRISM, it doesn't look like that is coming to a close anytime soon.

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Sources:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-surveillance-idUSKBN17U2OF
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/03/everyone-is-under-surveillance-now-says-whistleblower-edward-snowden
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3193368/security/nsa-ends-surveillance-tactic-that-pulled-in-citizens-emails-texts.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)
http://mashable.com/2017/04/29/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblowing/#n1wDeyPd5iq4
https://theintercept.com/2017/04/28/nsa-backs-down-on-major-surveillance-program-that-captured-americans-communications-without-a-warrant/