As far as I can tell most of these tools are useless
Not when it comes to spying on the opposition party!
> As far as I can tell most of these tools are useless
For terrorists, yes. Not for spying on citizens (and candidates/campaigns).
Before even considering reauthorizing, congress should demand
* full details on FISA requests in 2016
* full details on unmasking requests
* full details on surveillance of candidates and their staff.
* some other things congress has asked without adequate responses
“Intelligence” agencies have already said they “don’t have records”, “can’t track”, “lost information”, etc in a number of areas. If true, the first step is to fix their systems to allow auditing of future uses/misuses and to detect/prevent misuse as much as possible. If the explanations and excuses are not true, people need to be fired and jailed.
Unless congress can provide oversight with something better than answers in “the least most untruthful manner”, agencies should not have have capabilities that border on “unconstitutional” (someone/Clapper should be in jail). There are cases where extra-constitutional powers may be appropriate (i.e. knowing a nuclear bomb WILL go off “somewhere in the US” today). But that use needs to be completely transparent to the peoples’ representatives (a few members of congress in real time and all/most of congress at a later time) and very limited.