Campaign Action
Tuesday afternoon, the Senate will convene and have a vote to move forward to give the Trump administration, in the hands of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, nearly unfettered access to Americans’ electronic data. Their emails, chats, photos, videos and phone calls will be swept up and put in a database where they can be trawled through by law enforcement without warrants.
Congress could have closed the loophole in Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that allowed this unconstitutional data collection and surveillance. But these "backdoor searches" of Americans, without any evidence of wrongdoing, will stop being "incidental" and "backdoor" and will be codified by this legislation. This didn't have to happen and still doesn't.
First, Congress ought to narrow the type of information that can be collected under Section 702, and permanently end collection “about” a foreign intelligence target—which the NSA has already halted for inadequately protecting user privacy. Second, Congress should require judicial oversight for searches of Americans’ communications collected incidentally—as non-U.S. persons are the primary target of 702 surveillance. Finally, in the interest of improved transparency and oversight, Congress should increase the detail with which private companies can disclose the number and type of government requests they receive, permit additional declassification of FISA court orders, and require more reporting on how U.S. persons’ communications are queried and used by the government.
The FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act currently before the Senate accomplishes none of these things. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Bipartisan members of the House and Senate have offered two bills that would go a long way towards improving the protections and oversight surrounding Section 702 surveillance.
Sign and send a message to your senators telling them to step back from this brink and oppose the bill, and call them as well.
We know what’s going to happen with this administration given these powers, because it has sent a loud and clear message who they will target. Trump and Sessions, both unapologetically racist, will target Muslim-Americans, black Americans, Latino Americans, any group that they consider the enemy for unconstitutional surveillance and persecution. There can be absolutely no question of that.
We don’t have a lot of time to try to slow this train down. Mitch McConnell has set the bill up for consideration without any amendments. Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rand Paul (R-KY) will use up all the time they’ve got—30 hours—to try to convince enough colleagues that the current administration should not have these powers, but they need our help.