"Collect it all, process it all, exploit it all, partner it all, sniff it all... Know it all." That internal National Security Agency presentation — released in Edward Snowden's 2013 disclosures and cited by the authors of this essay — captures the ambition that has steered U.S. intelligence and, increasingly, domestic policing for a quarter-century.
NSA Upstream, Section 702, and the arc from presidential program to statutory debate
The essay traces the shift from targeted warrants to programs that sweep communications at scale. It recounts how the government moved quickly after Sept. 11 to collect Americans' telephone records first under what was called the “President’s Surveillance Program,” then later under a novel reading of Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act. That indiscriminate collection persisted for nearly fourteen years until the Second Circuit rejected the government's interpretation and Congress passed the USA Freedom Act in 2015.
Similarly, the NSA’s Upstream program — intercepting metadata and content at major U.S. telecommunications junctions — began soon after 9/11 under presidential authority and was later folded into the programmatic review regime authorized by Section 702 of the 2008 FISA Amendments Act. The NSA stopped certain content searches in 2017 under FISA court pressure, but mass collection continued. According to the essay, Congress allowed the program to officially expire in 2026; nevertheless, previously approved collection continues until at least spring 2027.
Private collection and the government pipeline: data brokers, platforms, and the FBI
The authors emphasize that mass surveillance is not solely a government project but also “the business model of the internet.” Companies such as Google and Facebook are named as examples of private actors that constantly track user behavior, creating datasets that law enforcement and intelligence can then access. The pipeline from private collection to governmental use is explicit: the essay reports that FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed in congressional testimony that the FBI is purchasing information on Americans from data brokers and intends to continue doing so.
That private-to-public handoff amplifies the reach of state surveillance without always triggering the procedural safeguards that would exist for direct government collection, the essay argues.
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End the scrambleLicense plate readers, facial recognition, and local law enforcement practices
Mass surveillance has migrated to local policing through networks of automated license plate readers such as those offered by Flock and Vigilant Solutions, which “blanket both public and private roadways and parking lots.” The essay documents practical harms: these systems are searchable by law enforcement across jurisdictions and are being used to track people seeking abortions across state lines. Facial recognition, once limited to elite federal units, now appears in airport screening by the Transportation Security Administration, in Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations against immigrants and protesters, and in private venues.
The record of misuse and error is already visible at the local level: a Texas police officer misused and lied about using license plate readers to track a woman suspected of seeking an abortion; other officials have been accused of tracking people for personal reasons; and companies’ technical protections have sometimes failed, producing “accidental” out-of-state data sharing.
Constitutional tensions: Fourth and First Amendment implications
The essay lays out the constitutional costs of mass collection. It argues that bulk collection undermines the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee of security in “persons, houses, papers and effects” by allowing access without individualized suspicion, particularity, or probable cause. The piece recounts the legal rationales the government has used to avoid warrants — including treating metadata as outside the Fourth Amendment, applying the Third Party Doctrine, and asserting that machine analysis differs from “human eyes” for constitutional purposes.
Mass surveillance also chills First Amendment rights to anonymous speech and association. The authors flag the 2026 U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy, noting that it “will prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender and anarchist” and “will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa.” They argue that the stated intent to apply national-security tools to domestic activists creates obvious friction with free-expression protections.
The essay also notes a judicial countercurrent: the Supreme Court has stepped toward limiting mass geofence warrants in Chatrie v. United States, signaling erosion of the Third Party Doctrine in some contexts.
What this means for ICE, law enforcement, and private vendors
- ICE: The essay documents that Immigration and Customs Enforcement already uses mass surveillance tools in immigration actions and against protesters; any legal or policy rollback could reduce ICE’s ready access to third-party and private surveillance datasets.
- Law enforcement (federal, state, and local): Agencies have increasingly relied on license plate readers, cellphone location data, facial recognition, and purchased brokered data. The history of “backdoor” searches and documented abuses — including “LOVEINT” internal reporting of romantic-partner misuse and Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s recounting of backdoor searches of protesters, campaign donors, members of Congress, journalists and a state judge — suggests that courts and Congress may face sustained pressure to limit access.
- Private vendors (Flock, Vigilant Solutions, data brokers): Companies supplying mass surveillance datasets are at the center of the private-public pipeline. Technical failures, “accidental” sharing, and the possibility of statutory limits such as the bipartisan “Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act” or bans on secondary uses could reshape their business models.
The essay’s prescriptions are comprehensive rather than incremental: require warrants before collection, access or use of datasets that include U.S. persons; preserve the expiration of Section 702; enact statutory limits such as the “Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act”; protect encryption and ban secondary uses; and consider fiduciary duties for mass data collectors. Its final admonition is stark: “Is it consistent with a self-governing democracy to have systems that watch everyone everywhere?” and, the authors warn, “as it becomes increasingly evident that the Trump administration is using mass surveillance to keep itself in power, stifle dissent, and undermine political opponents, these questions are now more urgent than ever.”
Source: 25 Years of Mass Surveillance Is Enough — Schneier on Security / Lawfare (originally)
