Through legislation and free deliberation.
> The NSA was found to be breaking the constitution
No, it hasn’t. Many believe it is, but the courts have so far upheld the NSA’s activities.
The American public’s views on the topic are mixed [1]. The fight is in convincing the public this is an issue.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/29/what-americ...
https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/yjolt/vol11/iss1/8/
The evidence suggests that blanket surveillance is a thing, and that's it very clearly unconstitutional.
Of course in this situation it's always possible to appeal to "national security" but that's an unconvincing legitimisation unless it can be proved that national security has been enhanced to an extent that warrants the suspension of constitutional protections.
So far as I know this has never even been tried in court, never mind proven.
That said, let's keep in mind context. Here we have a government program which we're able to freely debate. If enough of us prioritized its removal, it would be outlawed. That functions as a fundamental check totally lacking in China, moreso now that Xi is a dictator.
I'm not sure how it can be relegated completely to political representatives, given that the secreacy means that the check on representative desicions (an informed populace voting for their representatives) isn't present.
> That said, let's keep in mind context. Here we have a government program which we're able to freely debate. If enough of us prioritized its removal, it would be outlawed.
You can freely debate specific policies in China, and broadly unpopular policies in China are suspended.
That can't be said for the US, where whether a law is passed has more to do with whether the ruling class supports it, rather than it's broad popularity.
https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...
> That functions as a fundamental check totally lacking in China, moreso now that Xi is a dictator.
The whole 'Xi is a dictator' thing is severely overblown in Western media. Oh no, he has the same term limits as Angela Merkel now. Literally a dictator.
PS: linking to the states secrets wikipage to increase your number of citations is lol inducing.
The claim from upthread was:
> Unless you have some long term plans of joining their politburo and making changes 25 years from now, there's no way to way to apply direct pressure for change.
It genuinely seems like the most productive way for me to end this legal, constitutional spying (and China's spying is also legal and constitutional, mind you) is to spend 25 years being a wildly popular politician or entertainer, run for president, and issue an executive order, or to spend 25 years as an activist changing hearts and minds until there's support for a constitutional amendment banning it. There's clearly no direct way for me to apply pressure in the US.
... and if you say there's no demonstrable, specific harm, doesn't that support my claim at the top that I don't mind China spying on my traffic? Or does Chinese surveillance have demonstrable, specific harm in a way that US surveillance doesn't?