Proposed reforms of mass surveillance by the United States
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Proposed reforms of mass surveillance by the United States are a collection of diverse proposals offered in response to the
Global surveillance disclosures of 2013 Ongoing news reports in the international media have revealed operational details about the Anglophone cryptographic agencies' global surveillance of both foreign and domestic nationals. The reports mostly emanate from a cache of top secret ...
.


Legislative proposals


Amash–Conyers Amendment

The Amash–Conyers Amendment was a proposal to end the "NSA's blanket collection of Americans' telephone records", sponsored by Justin Amash and
John Conyers John James Conyers Jr. (May 16, 1929October 27, 2019) was an American politician of the Democratic Party who served as a U.S. representative from Michigan from 1965 to 2017. The districts he represented always included part of western Detroit. ...
. On July 24, 2013, the House rejected the amendment by a vote of 217 to 205.


NSA Inspector General Act

The NSA Inspector General Act is a proposed bill introduced by Mark Sanford on October 30, 2013. It would "require the Director of the National Security Agency and the Inspector General of the National Security Agency to be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate". Currently, the Inspector General is appointed by the Director of the NSA. Supporters of the bill argue that this arrangement "curbs their oversight effectiveness because the Director can remove them."


USA Freedom Act

The USA Freedom Act (, ) is a U.S. law enacted on June 2, 2015 that restored in modified form several provisions of the Patriot Act, which had expired the day before. The act imposes new limits on the bulk collection of telecommunication
metadata Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...
on U.S. citizens by American intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency. It also restores authorization for
roving wiretap In United States law, a roving wiretap is a special kind of wiretap permit that follows the surveillance target. For instance, if a target attempts to defeat a regular wiretap by throwing away a phone and acquiring a new one, another surveillance ...
s and tracking lone wolf terrorists. The title of the act originally was a ten-letter backronym (USA FREEDOM) that stood for Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-collection and Online Monitoring Act. The act was originally submitted on October 29, 2013 by
Jim Sensenbrenner Frank James Sensenbrenner Jr. (; born June 14, 1943) is an American politician who represented in the United States House of Representatives from 1979 to 2021 (numbered as the 9th district until 2003). He is a member of the Republican Party. ...
, author of the Patriot Act, and supported by Senator Patrick Leahy as . The bill's stated purpose is: "To rein in the dragnet collection of data by the National Security Agency (NSA) and other government agencies, increase transparency of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), provide businesses the ability to release information regarding FISA requests, and create an independent constitutional advocate to argue cases before the FISC." The Act places new limits on the bulk collection of Americans' metadata, ends the secret laws created by the
FISA The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 ("FISA" , ) is a United States federal law that establishes procedures for the physical and electronic surveillance and the collection of "foreign intelligence information" between "foreign pow ...
court, and introduces a "Special Advocate" to represent public and privacy matters to the court.


FISA Improvements Act

The
FISA Improvements Act The FISA Improvements Act is a proposed act by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Prompted by the disclosure of NSA surveillance by Edward Snowden, it would establish the surveillance program as legal, but im ...
is a proposed act by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Chair of the
Senate Intelligence Committee The United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (sometimes referred to as the Intelligence Committee or SSCI) is dedicated to overseeing the United States Intelligence Community—the agencies and bureaus of the federal government of ...
. Prompted by the disclosure of
NSA The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collectio ...
surveillance by
Edward Snowden Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American and naturalized Russian former computer intelligence consultant who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013, when he was an employee and su ...
, it would establish the surveillance program as legal, but impose some limitations on availability of the data. Opponents say the bill would codify warrantless access to many communications of American citizens for use by domestic law enforcement. A statement from multiple Senators on the intelligence committee explains that "this bill would codify the government's authority to collect the phone records of huge numbers of law-abiding Americans, and also to conduct warrantless searches for individual Americans' phone calls and emails."


Fourth Amendment Restoration Act

The Fourth Amendment Restoration Act is a proposed bill introduced by Senator
Rand Paul Randal Howard Paul (born January 7, 1963) is an American physician and politician serving as the junior U.S. senator from Kentucky since 2011. A member of the Republican Party, he is a son of former three-time presidential candidate and 12 ...
on June 7, 2013. It "provides that the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution shall not be construed to allow any U.S. government agency to search the phone records of Americans without a warrant based on probable cause." The bill was authored in light of the
Global Surveillance Disclosures of 2013 Ongoing news reports in the international media have revealed operational details about the Anglophone cryptographic agencies' global surveillance of both foreign and domestic nationals. The reports mostly emanate from a cache of top secret ...
, which Sen. Paul said "represents an outrageous abuse of power."


Fourth Amendment Protection Act

The Fourth Amendment Protection Acts, are a collection of state legislation aimed at bulk data collection. Specific examples include the ''Kansas Fourth Amendment Preservation and Protection Act'' and the
Arizona Fourth Amendment Protection Act The Arizona Fourth Amendment Protection Act is a bill proposed in the Arizona legislature that would withdraw state support for collection of metadata and ban the use of warrantless data in courts. The bill was introduced into the Arizona Senat ...
. They are proposed nullification laws. The proposals were made in 2013 and 2014 by legislators in the American states of Utah, Washington, Arizona, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and California. If enacted as law, they would prohibit the state governments from co-operating with the National Security Agency, whose
mass surveillance Mass surveillance is the intricate surveillance of an entire or a substantial fraction of a population in order to monitor that group of citizens. The surveillance is often carried out by local and federal governments or governmental organizati ...
efforts are seen as unconstitutional by the proposals' proponents. Some of the bills would require a warrant before information could be released, whereas others would forbid state universities from doing NSA research or hosting NSA recruiters.


Congressional calls for the resignation of James Clapper

On March 12, 2013, Director James Clapper testified under oath before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the committee charged with oversight of intelligence agencies. In response to the query "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Clapper testified, "No, sir." Senator Wyden pressed, "It does not?", to which Clapper testified "Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect, but not wittingly."Greenberg, Andy.
Watch Top U.S. Intelligence Officials Repeatedly Deny NSA Spying On Americans Over The Last Year (Videos)
." '' Forbes''. June 6, 2013. Retrieved on June 11, 2013. "Eight months later, Senator Ron Wyden quoted ..
Six members of Congress authored a letter calling for a new
Director of National Intelligence The director of national intelligence (DNI) is a senior, cabinet-level United States government official, required by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 to serve as executive head of the United States Intelligence Commu ...
, writing:
"The continued role of James Clapper as director of national intelligence is incompatible with the goal of restoring trust in our security programs and ensuring the highest level of transparency. Director Clapper continues to hold his position despite lying to Congress under oath about the existence of bulk data collection programs in March 2013. Asking Director Clapper, and other federal intelligence officials who misrepresented programs to Congress and the courts, to report to you on needed reforms ... is not a credible solution."
United States House of Representatives member Justin Amash has openly accused Clapper of criminal perjury. This sentiment has been echoed by Senator
Rand Paul Randal Howard Paul (born January 7, 1963) is an American physician and politician serving as the junior U.S. senator from Kentucky since 2011. A member of the Republican Party, he is a son of former three-time presidential candidate and 12 ...
. Senator Ron Wyden publicly addressed the situation, saying:
Let me start by saying that the men and women of America's intelligence agencies are overwhelmingly dedicated professionals, and they deserve to have leadership that is trusted by the American people. Unfortunately, that trust has been seriously undermined by senior officials' reckless reliance on secret interpretations of the law and battered by years of misleading and deceptive statements that senior officials made to the American people. These statements did not protect sources and methods that were useful in fighting terror. Instead, they hid bad policy choices and violation of the liberties of the American people. For example, the director of the NSA said publicly that the NSA doesn't hold data on U.S. citizens. That was obviously untrue. Justice Department officials testified that Section 215 of the Patriot Act is analogous to grand jury subpoena authority, and that deceptive statement was made on multiple occasions. Officials also suggested that the NSA doesn't have the authority to read Americans' e-mails without a warrant. But the FISA Court opinions declassified last August showed that wasn't true, either.


Executive proposals


Director of National Intelligence Review Group

The Director of National Intelligence Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies was a review group formed in light of the Global Surveillance disclosure of 2013. In December 2013, the five-member group produced a public report.


President Obama speech of January 17, 2014

On January 17, 2014, President Barack Obama gave a public address on mass surveillance. He observed that "totalitarian states like East Germany offered a cautionary tale of what could happen when vast unchecked surveillance turned citizens into informers and persecuted people for what they said in the privacy of their own homes." He continued,"In fact, even the United States proved not to be immune to the abuse of surveillance. In the 1960s government spied on civil rights leaders and critics of the Vietnam War." He proposed "restricting the use" of collected, but broadly endorsed the bulk data collection activities. Focussing "on surveillance authorized by Congress and overseen by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court" Obama said analysts querying the collection of domestic telephone logs from virtually every American under section 215 of the Patriot Act need first permission from a judge of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court who must approve each phone number before said analysts can run a search on this number in the database. He also restricted the range of people who will potentially get caught in the section 215 telephony metadata database and ordered his advisers within 60 days to find a way how to move the database away from government control. The president asked Congress to convene a panel of public advocates to represent consumers before the FISA court and stated there'll be no spying on "dozens" of foreign heads of state or heads of government. Besides reforms aside from those affecting Section 215 include some "protections applied to U.S. citizens abroad will also now be applied to foreign nationals. And companies will be able to make more disclosures about government data requests, including on National Security Letters, which will no longer be secret "indefinitely.""


Reactions

'' The Washington Post'' noted that "the changes he announced will allow he NSAto continue — or expand — the collection of personal data from billions of people around the world, Americans and foreign citizens alike." Senator Rand Paul criticized the remarks, saying:
Geoff Neale Geoffrey J. Neale is the first and current chair of the International Alliance of Libertarian Parties as well as the former chair of the Libertarian National Committee (LNC), the executive body of the Libertarian Party of the United States. He ...
stated on behalf of the Libertarian Party: The
Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ci ...
and
The Day We Fight Back The Day We Fight Back was a one-day global protest against mass surveillance by the US National Security Agency (NSA), the UK GCHQ, and the other Five Eyes partners involved in global surveillance. The "digital protest" took place on February ...
released a report card" of President Obama's speech on NSA reform:


Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board report

The
Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) is an independent agency within the executive branch of the United States government, established by Congress in 2004 to advise the President and other senior executive branch officials to en ...
(PCLOB) is an independent agency within the executive branch. On January 25, the board released
"Report on the Telephone Records Program Conducted under Section 215of the USA PATRIOT Act and on the Operations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court"
a 238-page document on mass surveillance. A majority of the board "deemed the spying illegal and is calling for it to be shut down".


Non-governmental proposals


Necessary and Proportional Principles

The International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance (also called the "Necessary and Proportionate Principles" or just "the Principles") are a collection of principles embodied in a July 2013 report on mass surveillance and human rights.


Tech Companies proposal of December 9, 2013

On December 9, 2013, eight tech giants issued an open letter and took out full-page advertisements to publish it. It read in part:
Dear Mr. President and Members of Congress,
We understand that governments have a duty to protect their citizens. But this summer’s revelations highlighted the urgent need to reform government surveillance practices worldwide. The balance in many countries has tipped too far in favor of the state and away from the rights of the individual — rights that are enshrined in our Constitution. This undermines the freedoms we all cherish. It’s time for a change.
Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo!, Facebook, Twitter,
AOL AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo (2017â ...
and LinkedIn participated in the open letter and the associated website,
ReformGovernmentSurveillance.com


See also

*
Targeted surveillance Targeted surveillance (or targeted interception) is a form of surveillance, such as wiretapping, that is directed towards specific persons of interest, and is distinguishable from mass surveillance (or bulk interception). Both untargeted and targ ...


References

{{reflist Mass surveillance Reform movements Reform in the United States Articles containing video clips United States