Remember the NSA? June 2013 was the month that changed the way we see the internet. It was the month that Edward Joseph Snowden began giving the world detailed descriptions of the NSA's mass surveillance programs. 
The scandal that erupted put many people in a difficult position. The initial denial of responsibility at first, after the ongoing data leak turned into excuses from agencies, technology companies, and the US government, trying to reassure the online community.
In the end there was an acceptance of responsibility by the NSA, which essentially stated that mass surveillance is carried out for our good, as a self-determined principle of protecting the global community.
Since then, Congress has been trying to learn more about these NSA surveillance programs, and as it appears, it has not succeeded.
In a letter delivered yesterday to the Director of the National Intelligence Agency, James Clapper, a group of 14 legislators (eight Democrats and six Republicans) asked to learn how many Americans have had data collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Section 702 is the legal justification for many of the NSA's most invasive programs, such as PRISM, whose existence we have known since 2013, but we still do not know its scope. Thus, Congress asked to learn.
Even before Snowden, members of Congress were asking to learn details about how Section 702 is used. Naturally, the NSA has not responded in any case.
It is worth recalling that the last time Congress tried to hold an intelligence agency accountable for its actions, the CIA literally hacked into the computers of congressional senators, in a blatant violation of democratic norms for which the agency still faces no repercussions.
The fact shows us that the government's organs are no longer able to keep these services accountable for anything. They operate like authoritarian regimes embedded in a nominally democratic state.
