Proposed USA FREEDOM Act Seeks to Limit NSA’s Reach

Photo courtesy of Electronic Frontier Foundation 
(https://supporters.eff.org/shop/illegal-spying-eagle-sticker)

 On October 29, 2013, Senator Patrick Leady (D-VT) and Representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) introduced a new NSA reform bill into both the House of Representatives and the Senate.  As of this writing, the act has 16 co-sponsors in the Senate and over 70 in the House.  The bill is called the Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-collection and Online Monitoring Act, or the USA FREEDOM ACT for short.  The goal of the act is to drastically limit the ability of the National Security Agency to collect information of United States citizens.  As stated in the bill’s official summary:

The bipartisan, bicameral USA FREEDOM Act will rein in the dragnet collection of data by the National Security Agency (NSA), increase the transparency of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court) decision-making, provide businesses the ability to release information regarding FISA requests, create an independent advocate to argue cases before the FISA Court, and impose new and shorter sunsets on controversial surveillance authorities.

Introduction of the bill comes amidst increasing concern of the NSA’s surveillance practices conducted on both American soil and abroad.   Prior to the leak committed by former intelligence analyst Edward Snowden last spring, the true scope of the NSA’s operations was unknown.  Now, it has been revealed that many of the NSA’s operations are being conducted with little judicial oversight and may even breach constitutional boundaries.  So far, Snowden’s leak has revealed that the NSA collects the metadata of millions of American citizens.  Metadata is information about the time and location of a phone call or email.  Though the contents of the call or email are not surveyed, it has been argued that collecting metadata infringes on Americans expectations of privacy and can reveal facts many citizens would not wish to disclose.  Also, pursuant to the 2008 FISA Amendments Act, these collections can be conducted without a warrant as long as one end of the communications is a non-US citizen, or if surveillance is sought over a US citizen located outside the country.  For matters concerning U.S. citizens at home, the NSA must request a warrant from a FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court.  The FISA court sits ex parte- meaning that only the judge and the government are present at the hearings.  There is no attorney present to advocate against the granting of a surveillance warrant.  Since the court was established in 1978, the court has rejected only .03% of all government surveillance requests.

It has furthermore been revealed that through a program known as PRISM, the agency can collect data from major Internet companies such as Google, Facebook, Apple, Yahoo, and Skype.  Through PRISM, the NSA can collect content such as e-mail, videos, photos, file transfers, social network details, and even voice samples.  Many of these Internet companies claim that they are compelled by law to release this data in cooperation with the NSA, and have lobbied Congress for the right to disclose to the public exactly how many of its members are affected by the NSA’s data collection requests.  The goal of this transparency is to help the Internet companies regain the trust of its users and dispel any notions that the government has direct access to these companies’ servers.

Ironically, much of the NSA’s current powers were granted under the Patriot Act of 2001, which was written in part by Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, co-writer of the USA FREEDOM Act.  The USA FREEDOM Act seeks to limit the scope of the NSA’s powers by amending certain sections of the Patriot Act as well as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).  The act seeks to end the bulk collection of American metadata, place a “Special Advocate” to be present at FISA court hearings to dispute government surveillance requests, and allow companies to disclose an estimate of the number of FISA orders and National Security Letters they have received, the number they complied with, and the number of users and accounts impacted.  

The USA FREEDOM ACT’s complete text can be found here.

(Blog entry written by Alex Diamond, IBLT/Carter DeLuca Entrepreneurship Support Fellow for the Fall 2013 semester)