Access Now

Today the U.S. Congress will hold its first open hearing on the upcoming deadline to reauthorize the FISA Amendments Act (FAA). The FAA, among other things, is the law that houses Section 702, now infamous for providing authorization for the National Security Administration’s Prism and Upstream surveillance programs, revealed by The Washington Post with documents made available by Edward Snowden. Section 702 provides the rules for conducting surveillance that takes place within the United States but that targets people or groups who are neither U.S. citizens nor permanent residents. The FISA Amendments Act, including Section 702, is set to expire on December 31, 2017 unless Congress passes legislation to renew the law.

“Surveillance must respect basic human rights. Access Now calls upon the U.S. Congress to provide protections to ensure that innocent people are not caught in the broad surveillance dragnet. Unless Congress can respect the human rights of all people, then these programs can and should end,” said Amie Stepanovich, U.S. Policy Manager at Access Now.

Under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the NSA collects hundreds of millions of digital communications at rest and in transit from the major internet backbones running in and out of the U.S., as well as from Google, Facebook, YouTube, and other companies, involving “targets” overseas.

Americans’ communications are constitutionally protected from warrantless searches, but when those communications are swept up by the NSA “incidentally” to its main goal, those protections have been essentially ignored.