Is this the end of our domestic spying pal, Snuggly the Security Bear? Most likely not. Snuggly will probably still be in business and up to his usual tricks—he just may have to work with a huge telecom company or some kind of NSA-corporate partnership.
Mitch McConnell recently attempted to ram through a last-minute extension of provisions in the Patriot Act that have been used to keep domestic spying “legal.” (Never mind that the Second Circuit Court said that Section 215 of the Patriot Act cannot be used to justify bulk collection of everyone’s metadata.) Very long story short, barring any last-minute legislative slight-of-hand, NSA collection of everyone’s phone call metadata will come to an end this Monday.
The spying-at-all-costs crowd is still pushing to keep things as they are, allowing the NSA to harvest scrillions of bits of data on each and every person in the United States. Chances are a “compromise” will come out of Congress that even the NSA endorses. (Which should give you an indication of the extent of this “reform.”) Hey, it’s a start! Domestic spying will be reined in somewhat, and chances are we’ll find out in a few months that really not much has changed, methinks. Pray for Snuggly, and comment, like, and share the cartoon—and dig deeper into some of the links behind the cartoon.
Mark Fiore is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning cartoonist based in San Francisco, where his work has been featured on the San Francisco Chronicle’s web site, SFGate.com, for over ten years. His work has also appeared on Newsweek.com, Slate.com, CBSNews.com, MotherJones.com and NPR’s website. Fiore’s political animation has been featured on CNN, Frontline, BillMoyers.com, Salon.com and cable and broadcast outlets across the globe.