The surprising shutdown of the NSA‘s email harvesting program — one that operated „upstream“ and grabbed not just communications to and from surveillance targets, but also those „about“ surveillance targets — is good news. Considering the NSA had done nothing but abuse this specific privilege, the shutdown is a welcome surprise. But it‘s not great news, for a variety of reasons.

First, the shutdown arrives on the heels of a yearlong denial of surveillance requests by the FISA court. This indicates the NSA was either still abusing its collection or the court no longer felt the program was constitutional, at least not the way the NSA was running it. T