The US Freedom Act: so is the US now free?

As expected, earlier this month the US Congress passed the USA Freedom Act, effectively restoring a slightly modified version of the Patriot Act; just under a different name.The main difference is that the Freedom Act imposes limits on the amount of telecoms metadata the NSA and other US intel agencies are allowed to collect. The act also now (or for the pedants - will do in 180 days of signature) restores the NSA’s powers for “roving wiretaps” and tracking “lone wolf terrorists”.

The USA FREEDOM ironically stands for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-collection and Online Monitoring Act." So, just what rights does this act fulfill? The American people’s right to end eavesdropping, dragnet-collection and online monitoring? Or does it re-fulfill the US Governments right for online monitoring? 

The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation – who fight for the rights and privacy in a digital world) pulled their support for the Freedom Act back in May saying the revised bill is too open to mis-interpretation (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/05/op-ed-why-the-eff-is-pulling-its-support-for-the-usa-freedom-act/).

But don’t worry, the US government still has plenty of surveillance power (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/dont-worry-government-still-has-plenty-surveillance-power-if-section-215-sunsets). The Onion also reports on how the NSA now need to rely on mass surveillance programs that have not yet come to light, saying the agency still has a wide variety of covert hacking, wiretapping, and GPS-tracking programs at its disposal that have not yet been exposed by whistleblowers or investigative journalists: http://www.theonion.com/article/frustrated-nsa-now-forced-rely-mass-surveillance-p-50550.

In other words, if the NSA cannot collect data legally it will just have to use techniques we don’t know about. Just as it did before Snowden maybe?