Major U.S. tech firms press Congress for internet surveillance reforms
Major U.S. tech firms press Congress for internet
surveillance reforms
By Dustin Volz | WASHINGTON Fri May 26, 2017 | 11:56am
EDT
Facebook, Amazon and more than two dozen other U.S.
technology companies pressed Congress on Friday to make changes to a broad
internet surveillance law, saying they were necessary to improve privacy
protections and increase government transparency.
The request marks the first significant public effort by
Silicon Valley to wade into what is expected to be a contentious debate later
the year over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, parts of which will
expire on Dec. 31 unless Congress reauthorizes them.
Of particular concern to the technology industry and
privacy advocates is Section 702, which allows U.S. intelligence agencies to
vacuum up vast amounts of communications from foreigners but also incidentally
collects some data belonging to Americans that can be searched by analysts
without a warrant.
"We are writing to express our support for reforms
to Section 702 that would maintain its utility to the U.S. intelligence
community while increasing the program’s privacy protections and transparency,"
the companies wrote in a letter to Representative Bob Goodlatte, the Republican
chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee.
Section 702 is considered a vital tool by U.S.
intelligence officials, estimated to be responsible for as much as a quarter of
surveillance conducted by the U.S. National Security Agency.
But it has long been targeted by civil liberties
advocates as too expansive and lacking in sufficient safeguards.
Disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in
2013 revealed the sweeping nature of 702 surveillance, causing embarrassment
for some U.S. technology firms.
In their letter, the companies asked lawmakers to codify
the recent termination of a type of NSA surveillance that collected American
communications sent to or received from someone living overseas that mentioned
a foreign intelligence target.
Lawmakers should also require judicial oversight of
government queries of data collected under Section 702 that involved American
communications and narrow the definition of "foreign intelligence
information" to reduce the collection of data that belongs to foreigners
not suspected of wrongdoing, the companies said.
The letter asks for more leeway in how companies are
allowed to disclose the number of surveillance requests and more
declassification of orders approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court.
Legislation currently being drafted by a bipartisan group
of lawmakers in the House Judiciary Committee is expected to address all of the
concerns raised in the technology companies' letter.
Other signatories on the letter include Alphabet Inc's
Google, Cisco, Twitter, Uber, Yahoo and Snap.
(Reporting by Dustin Volz; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
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