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MASS SURVEILLANCE  
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Matthew Guariglia, Andrew Crocker, Cindy Cohn and Brendan Gilligan
April 25, 2024
Scheer Post
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_ US Senate and Biden Admin Usher in a Two Year Expansion of
Unconstitutional Mass Surveillance _

, Wikipedia

 

One week after it was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, the
Senate has passed what Senator Ron Wyden has called, “ONE OF THE
MOST DRAMATIC AND TERRIFYING EXPANSIONS OF GOVERNMENT SURVEILLANCE
AUTHORITY IN HISTORY.” President Biden then rushed to sign it into
law.  

The perhaps ironically named “Reforming Intelligence and Security
America Act (RISAA)” does everything BUT reform Section 702 of the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)
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mass surveillance program, it greatly expands the government’s
authority by allowing it to compel a much larger group of people and
providers
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assisting with this surveillance. The bill’s only significant
“compromise” is a limited, two-year extension of this mass
surveillance. But overall, RISAA is a travesty for Americans who
deserve basic constitutional rights and privacy whether they are
communicating with people and services inside or outside of the US.

Section 702 allows the government to conduct surveillance of
foreigners abroad from inside the United States. It operates, in part,
through the cooperation of large telecommunications service providers
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massive amounts of traffic on the Internet backbone
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accessed and those communications on the government’s secret list
are copied. And that’s just one part of the massive, expensive
program. 

While Section 702 prohibits the NSA and FBI
from _intentionally_ targeting Americans with this mass
surveillance, these agencies routinely acquire a huge amount of
innocent Americans’ communications “incidentally
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can then conduct backdoor, warrantless searches
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collected” communications.

The government cannot even follow the very lenient rules about what it
does with the massive amount of information it gathers under Section
702, repeatedly
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searching its databases for Americans’ communications. In 2021
alone, the FBI reported conducting up to 3.4 million warrantless
searches
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Section 702 data using Americans’ identifiers. Given this history of
abuse, it is difficult to understand how Congress could decide to
expand the government’s power under Section 702 rather than rein it
in.

One of RISAA’s most egregious expansions is its large but
ill-defined increase of the range of entities that have to turn over
information to the NSA and FBI. This provision allegedly “responds
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to a 2023 decision
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the FISC Court of Review, which rejected the government’s argument
that an unknown company was subject to Section 702 for some
circumstances. While the New York Times reports
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the unknown company from this FISC opinion was a data center, this new
provision is written so expansively that it potentially reaches any
person or company with “access” to “equipment” on which
electronic communications travel or are stored, regardless of whether
they are a direct provider. This could potentially include landlords,
maintenance people, and many others who routinely have access to your
communications on the interconnected internet.

This is to say nothing of RISAA’s other substantial expansions.
RISAA changes FISA’s definition of “foreign intelligence” to
include “counternarcotics”: this will allow the government to use
FISA to collect information relating to not only the “international
production, distribution, or financing of illicit synthetic drugs,
opioids, cocaine, or other drugs driving overdose deaths,” but also
to any of their precursors. While surveillance under FISA has
(contrary to what most Americans believe) never been limited
exclusively to terrorism and counterespionage, RISAA’s expansion of
FISA to ordinary crime is unacceptable.

RISAA also allows the government to use Section 702 to vet immigrants
and those seeking asylum. According to a FISC opinion
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in 2023, the FISC repeatedly denied government attempts to obtain some
version of this authority, before finally approving it for the first
time in 2023. By formally lowering Section 702’s protections for
immigrants and asylum seekers, RISAA exacerbates
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risk that government officials could discriminate against members of
these populations on the basis of their sexuality, gender identity,
religion, or political beliefs.

Faced with massive pushback from EFF and other civil liberties
advocates, some members of Congress, like Senator Ron Wyden, raised
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alarm. We were able to squeeze out a couple of small concessions. One
was a shorter reauthorization period for Section 702, meaning that the
law will be up for review in just two more years. Also, in a letter to
Congress, the Department of Justice claimed it would only interpret
the new provision to apply to the type of unidentified businesses at
issue in the 2023 FISC opinion. But a pinky promise
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the current Department of Justice is not enforceable and easily
disregarded by a future administration. There is some possible hope
here, because Senator Mark Warner promised
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return to the provision in a later defense authorization bill, but
this whole debacle just demonstrates how Congress gives the NSA and
FBI nearly free rein when it comes to protecting Americans – any
limitation that actually protects us (and here the FISA Court actually
did some protecting) is just swept away.

RISAA’s passage is a shocking reversal—EFF and our allies had
worked hard to put together a coalition aimed at enacting a warrant
requirement for Americans and some other critical reforms
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but the NSA, FBI and their apologists just rolled Congress
with scary-sounding
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incorrect
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stories that a lapse in the spying was imminent. It was a clear
dereliction of Congress’s duty to oversee the intelligence community
in order to protect all of the rest of us from its long history of
abuse.

After over 20 years of doing it, we know that rolling back any
surveillance authority, especially one as deeply entrenched as Section
702, is an uphill fight [[link removed]]. But we
aren’t going anywhere. We had more Congressional support this time
than we’ve had in the past, and we’ll be working to build that
over the next two years.

Too many members of Congress (and the Administrations of both parties)
don’t see any downside to violating your privacy and your
constitutional rights in the name of national security. That needs to
change.

MATTHEW GUARIGLIA, ANDREW CROCKER, CINDY COHN AND BRENDAN GILLIGAN /
ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION (EFF)
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an award-winning top news source on the most important issues of our
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and promise to keep bringing you this kind of vital news._

* surveillance
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* Joe Biden
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* NSA
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