maybe i got it wrong but i think the freedom act was the replacement provided by the house which neither paul nor mcconnell wanted.
paul represents the libertarian view. mcconnell represents the plutocratic view. the house bill sounds like it is more the constitutional compromise. i haven't read it, of course, but i have read reports characterising its changes. targetted surveillance is permitted using the traditional application model. broad surveillance is not. the government is not the phone record keeper.
the courts said the nsa program was illegal under current law. so the good news for those of us who believe in the traditional anglo-saxon understanding of the values of freedom (innocent until proven guilty, reasonable suspicion/probable cause etc) is that the patriot act is expiring.
the nsa programme wasn't doing anything useful for security against terrorism anyway. its main use was apparently in "the war on drugs". the president's own commission couldn't find an example of the programme succeeding in preventing domestic terrorism. so it represented the loss of privacy for no gain worth the effort.
if you think there is security in the customary balances struck between the state and the individual achieved through liberty, this is a good day. if you agree with dick cheney that security justifies the loss of privacy, then it's not a good one. my view is that you don't achieve security by wrapping innocent people in cotton wool or robbing them of their private conversations. if you want to find moslem terrorists, bite the bullet and target radical mosques and online intermediaries, which is where the most dangerous of these people emerge from.
since the courts have spoken and congress was unable to preserve the law as previously written when exposed to daylight, it is clear that snowden prevailed. what the nsa was doing couldn't withstand legal and democratic scrutiny. when an open debate occurred, the existing programme has been curtailed.
i don't think it makes any difference in the presidential race. paul isn't going to win it anyway. but he expressed his principles during this debate. folks generally complain when politicians stand for nothing.
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