Jon Stewart "celebrated" the expiration of certain provisions of the Patriot Act -- such as the NSA's massive data collection program -- by making an emergency phone call to an old friend.
“My God! We’re no longer tracking metadata -- this is an emergency. I have to notify someone quickly," Stewart said on Monday night's "Daily Show" as he got out a phone and frantically dialed.
But he wasn't exactly getting ready to discuss the finer points of the law. Instead, he decided to prank call former "Daily Show" correspondent and current "Last Week Tonight" host John Oliver.
(Check out the prank for yourself in the clip above.)
It wasn't all prank calls for Stewart, however. During the segment, Stewart also criticized supporters of the provisions for inflated claims about the importance of the domestic spying program, noting that the suspects behind attacks at Fort Hood, the Boston Marathon and the attack on a cartoon Mohammad contest in Garland, Texas were all on the government radar, yet were not stopped.
"If the Patriot Act is working that poorly, why are all these guys so adamant we have to keep it?” he asked. "It's like one of the Jurassic Park staff saying 'We can't debate the finer points of our security system right now. We're dealing with our fourth consecutive dinosaur escape. Give the system a chance to work.'"
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