Related Updates
As a Provider Fought a Secret Surveillance Order, Court Denied It Access to Relevant Law
The U.S. government’s foreign surveillance law is so secretive that not even a service provider challenging an order issued by a secret court got to access it. That Kafkaesque episode —denying a party access to the law being used against it—was made public this week in a...
NSA Reneges on Promise to Tell Congress How Many Innocent Americans it Spies On
Lawmakers should know how the laws they pass impact their constituents. That’s especially true when the law would reauthorize a vast Internet and telephone spying program that collects information about millions of law-abiding Americans. But that’s exactly what the Intelligence Community wants Congress to do when it considers reauthorizing a...
Liveblogging Today's Senate Intelligence Hearing on Section 702
The debate over expiring online spying powers is heating up. The Senate Intelligence Committee is holding an open hearing on Section 702, as enacted by the FISA Amendments Act, which is set to sunset at the end of the year. The House Judiciary Committee held its own ...
Wikimedia's Constitutional Challenges of NSA Upstream Surveillance Move Forward
A court ruling today allowing Wikimedia ’s claims challenging the constitutionality of NSA’s Upstream surveillance to go forward is good news. It shows that the court—the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit—is willing to take seriously the impact mass surveillance...
Judge Orders Government to Provide Evidence About Internet Surveillance
We're finally going to get some honesty on how the NSA spies on innocent Americans' communications. A federal judge late last week in Jewel v. NSA , EFF’s landmark case against mass surveillance, ordered [PDF] the government to provide to it all relevant evidence necessary to prove...
What Don’t You Want the NSA to Know About You?
For years, U.S. government surveillance of innocent Americans has been a topic of heated debate, especially for those in the tech community. With Congress gearing up for a fight over the 2017 reauthorization of a surveillance authority that lets the NSA spy on innocent Americans without a warrant—Section 702, enacted...
The End of the NSA's ‘About’ Searches Is Just the Beginning
The NSA is stopping its use of one controversial surveillance technique that impacts Americans' privacy. Make no mistake. This is good news for anyone who wants government surveillance to follow the law. But there’s much more to be done to rein in unconstitutional spying. Initially reported by The New...
Dissent Made Meaningful
Over the last year, large numbers of Americans have grown politically active for the first time. Reflecting the depth of our constitutional crisis, however, many seem not to know how to meaningfully raise their voices or participate in the political process. Civic Participation Beyond Elections Turnout in...
Here’s what Trump can do about surveillance if he really wants to
If the former real estate mogul is truly concerned about being the target of broad surveillance, he now has the power to change that by calling on Congress to reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. Cindy Cohn, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s executive director, said in a statement that...
Trump's Director of National Intelligence Pick Is on the Wrong Side of Surveillance
President Donald Trump’s pick for Director of National Intelligence has laid out his vision for the country’s surveillance, and it’s not good for technology users. In his confirmation in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee this week, former-Sen. Dan Coats, a Republican from Indiana, said there need to be continued...
