End Mass Surveillance: Tell Congress to Block Section 702 Reauthorization Until it Restores Americans’ Privacy
Petition to Congress:
We urge you to block the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act unless it is packaged with an overhaul of privacy protections for United States persons. Since its inception in 2008, Section 702 has granted vague, overly broad powers that permit government agencies to surveil, search, and collect Americans communications without a warrant. These surveillance practices clearly violate Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights. Section 702 is dangerous and unconstitutional, and Congress has failed to restore our right to privacy from the government for far too long. FISA must be overhauled — or Section 702 must be brought to an end.
This year, Congress can end the dangerous surveillance activities that occur under a law known as Section 702. Established in 2008, the law allows government agencies to collect information about hundreds of thousands of people outside the United States without a single warrant, even when it includes communications of and other revealing information about Americans.1
Worse, the FBI then knowingly searches through this huge volume of information specifically looking for Americans millions of times per year (“backdoor searches”). The program has been sharply criticized from all corners, progressives and conservatives alike, because it poses an existential threat to civil liberties.(1)In 2019, newly released documents revealed that the FBI had even broken its own rules by unlawfully searching Section 702 information tens of thousands of times, which the government itself shockingly attributed to “fundamental misunderstandings by some FBI personnel [about] what the standard ‘reasonably likely to return foreign intelligence information’ means.”2
Section 702 allows US government intelligence agencies like the NSA, CIA, and FBI to collect, use, and disseminate content that moves across U.S. internet companies (like Google, Facebook, Microsoft) or via U.S. internet networks (like AT&T, Verizon, and Cox).
Section 702 does not require its surveillance targets to be suspected terrorists, spies, or even agents of foreign powers. The law only states that targets must be “non-US persons located abroad” and that a “significant purpose” of the surveillance be to obtain “foreign intelligence information” (and foreign intelligence information includes all information related to the “conduct of the foreign affairs of the United States”).3
That’s already broad enough. But last year we found out the FBI alone conducted up to 3.4 million backdoor searches. And under current rules, agencies can use the information obtained in these searches against Americans in court.
Section 702 is overly broad, dangerous, and threatens Americans’ Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure. Agencies have already thoroughly abused the loopholes this law creates.It’s time for Congress to end mass surveillance by overhauling Section 702 and FISA writ large — or refuse to reauthorize Section 702 altogether.
Sources:
- The Daily Beast, “Secret Court: FBI Warrantless Searches Were Illegal,” August 10, 2022.
- The Washington Post, “The fight over an expiring surveillance authority just kicked off,” January 13, 2023.
- Center for Democracy and Technology, “Section 702: What It Is & How It Works,”February 17, 2017.