P.S., the reason you don't see as much wrangling or dramatic threats to shut down the government over this budget bill is because a bunch of stuff like this was loaded into it. Because Congress is under enormous pressure by law enforcement and intelligence agencies to undermine computer security in the name of "safety", but they can't be seen doing it because it's extremely unpopular.
What will be interesting is if all the riders on this budget bill are so unpopular that the voting public demands a government shutdown.
Personally, I think everyone here is better off spending time writing software to make surveillance less practical. Even if the U.S. government is nominally constrained by laws (they aren't in practice), there are plenty of other actors in the world that aren't governed by any constraints and will monitor all electronic communications up to their technical capacity to do so.
If you care about privacy and information security you need to be working on tools to make it impossible for surveillance to occur, not petitioning a Congress that is dead-set on screwing you.
What will be interesting is if all the riders on this budget bill are so unpopular that the voting public demands a government shutdown.
Personally, I think everyone here is better off spending time writing software to make surveillance less practical. Even if the U.S. government is nominally constrained by laws (they aren't in practice), there are plenty of other actors in the world that aren't governed by any constraints and will monitor all electronic communications up to their technical capacity to do so.
If you care about privacy and information security you need to be working on tools to make it impossible for surveillance to occur, not petitioning a Congress that is dead-set on screwing you.