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National Security Agency's headquarters in Fort Meade, Md.

(Paul J. Richards/AFP-Getty)

Just 23 months after Edward Snowden first revealed the massive scope of NSA data collection, somebody has finally taken action to put an end to it.

Now it's time to root for more dominoes to fall.

The Second Circuit Court ruled Thursday that collecting Americans' phone data is not legal under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which expires in a few weeks. The court, however, punted on whether the program violates the Constitution. That puts it back in hands of Congress, where they can either start to turn out the lights on some provisions or vote for a blanket reauthorization - the option preferred by Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, as he shouts into his insular void about ISIS hiding in his basement.

Spoiler alert: Most of Congress - where humans go to be disagreeable - overwhelmingly supports an overhaul, judging by the 25-2 vote from the House Judiciary Committee on a pending bill.

So the court's decision has broad significance, as it may clear the way for a full challenge against the world's largest intelligence agency, which has the capacity to monitor one billion phone chats and internet sessions simultaneously.

That, after all, isn't what we signed up for. That consensus is enshrined in law, where "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause. . . ."

In other words, subjecting the citizenry to unwarranted and indiscriminate searches was abolished by the Fourth Amendment, but somebody forgot to tell the intelligence community. Particularly after the panic was ginned up post-9/11 -- when the fear of terrorism, stoked by exaggerated threats, was exploited as a way to justify the expansion of the surveillance apparatus.

It's been an NSA milk run since then: Our personal electronics provide every shred of information they could possibly need, because this is where we make friends, plan our activities, share our politics, and store our private data.

And in many cases and many cultures, that power of surveillance - invented by J. Edgar Hoover, who applied it to a half-million "subversives" like John Lennon and Martin Luther King Jr. -- has been used to suppress dissent and mandate compliance.

But two years after Snowden showed up on our radar, the omnipotent intelligence complex is getting tagged - lightly, but persistently, starting with that Second Circuit ruling.

Consider: The aforementioned USA Freedom Act will pass by a wide bipartisan majority and represent the first roll-back of a counterterrorism program since 9/11. Beyond the beltway, there is growing pressure on Apple and Google to put encryption technology on their products, because consumers are getting nervous. And, two candidates for the presidency - Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders - are expected to make their opposition to the security state a prominent part of their campaigns and force the frontrunners to talk about it.

Americans have differing views of an acceptable level of government surveillance, but that decision shouldn't be left up to a few people. It's up to all of us to have the debate, because the only alternative is to forsake the democracy.

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