This is quite important for a variety of reasons, including that nearly every rationale given by the NSA and its defenders for surveillance programs under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act and Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act simply doesn‘t apply to surveillance done under EO 12333. Claims such as that the surveillance has oversight from all three branches of government? That‘s not true at all — not even in the fake-oversight way that there‘s „official“ oversight of the US-focused programs. Claims that the courts have tested these programs? Again, not so. The FISA Court has no authority over the programs that are technically under EO 12333. Basically, it‘s fair game — and since it‘s now obvious that these programs are collecting data on Americans, the ACLU is making the fairly strong argument that there needs to be some legal analysis — and, as a starting point, the government should reveal its own basis for these programs.