ACLU urges action today on surveillance of Americans
The House Republican leadership is struggling to get enough votes to pass legislation to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and is expected to try again for floor action on Thursday. The program expires on April 20.
Congress first enacted the law in 2008, legalizing a form of a once-secret warrantless wiretapping program that the Bush administration established after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, says The New York Times.
Section 702 allows the CIA, National Security Agency, FBI and other agencies to collect and analyze vast amounts of overseas communications without a warrant, says The Associated Press. It incidentally sweeps up the conversations of any Americans who interact with those foreigners who are targeted for surveillance.
The Trump administration and national security hawks in both parties want Congress to extend the program for 18 months without changes.
But privacy advocates in both parties want to impose new limits on surveillance and data collection affecting Americans as part of any measure extending the program, says the Times. They want to require the government to get warrants before gaining access to Americans’ communications in the Section 702 repository, and ban it from buying Americans’ data from brokers if it would need a warrant to get that information directly.
“Although Section 702 of FISA allows the government to collect and read the communications of people overseas, in practice it scoops up huge amounts of Americans’ communications. The government is then able to search for and read Americans’ messages without a warrant or any court oversight,” says Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and has warned about FISA abuses for years.
“National security and civil liberties are not mutually exclusive,” says Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz. “We can give our intelligence professionals the tools they need to target foreign threats while ensuring that Americans are not subjected to unconstitutional surveillance.”
The growing power of artificial intelligence is driving new worries among both Republicans and Democrats about government agencies’ warrantless purchases of Americans’ sensitive data, says Politico.
The federal government long has used commercially available information bought from data brokers for national security, military operations and criminal investigations, bypassing constitutional restrictions on the kinds of information agencies can gather on Americans directly. But agencies’ surveillance capabilities were limited by the vast amount of labor and expertise necessary to analyze millions of data points.
Here are letters Wyden has written this week to his colleagues in the Senate and to House lawmakers urging them to oppose any extension of Section 702 that doesn’t include reforms.
The American Civil Liberties Union is asking Americans to contact their senators and House representative urging a no-vote on the extension of Section 702 without reforms.
Here is the ACLU’s explainer of the issue.
And here is the ACLU form to take quick action.
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You can call the Capitol switchboard, (202) 224-3121, and be connected to the offices of your representative and senators. To email your House member and your two senators, you can connect to their websites at Congress.gov. Most lawmakers seem to only accept emails from their constituents, but these leaders accept emails from Americans nationwide, at:
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer
Senate Majority Leader John Thune