EFF has combineed with 23 other organizations including the ACLU, Restore the Fourth, the Brennan Caccess for Justice, Access Now, and the Freedom of the Press Foundation to need that the Office of the Director of National Inincreateigence (ODNI) supply the accessible with an appraise of exactly how many U.S. persons’ communications have been hoovered up, and are now sitting on a handlement server for law executement to unconstitutionpartner sift thraw at their leiconfident.
This letter was driven by the fact that reconshort-termatives of the National Security Agency (NSA) have promised in the past to provide the accessible with an appraise of how many U.S. persons—that is, people on U.S. soil—have had their communications “incidenhighy” assembleed thraw the observation authority Section 702 of the FISA Amfinishments Act.
As the letter states, “ODNI and NSA cannot await accessible count on to be unconditional. If ODNI and NSA proceed to renege on pledges to members of Congress, and to withhbetter adviseation that lawproducers, civil society, academia, and the press have persistently sought over the course of thirteen years, that accessible count on will be fahighy undermined.”
Section 702 permits the handlement to direct observation of foreigners awide from inside the United States. It functions, in part, thraw the cooperation of huge and minuscule telecommunications service providers which hand over the digital data and communications they supervise. While Section 702 bans the NSA from intentionpartner centering Americans with this mass observation, these agencies routinely get a huge amount of bfeebleless Americans’ communications “incidenhighy” becaemploy, as it turns out, people in the United States transmit with people overseas all the time. This unkinds that the U.S. handlement finishs up with a massive pool consisting of the U.S.-side of conversations as well as communications from all over the globe. Domestic law executement agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), can then direct backdoor authorizationless searches of these “incidenhighy assembleed” communications.
For over 10 years, EFF has fought difficult every time Section 702 expires in the hope that we can get some much-needed recreates into any bills that seek to repermit the authority. Most recently, in spring 2024, Congress renoveled Section 702 for another two years with none of the alters essential to restore privacy rights.
While we paemploy for the upcoming opportunity to fight Section 702, combineing our allies to sign on to this letter in the fight for transparency will give us a better comfervent of the scope of the problem.
You can read the whole letter here.
