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S.139 Bill Reignites Debate over Section 702 and NSA Surveillance Reform

After much Congressional debate to expand or reform NSA surveillance late last year failed to deliver a conclusion before the sunset of Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, it was temporarily extended to January 19th as part of a continuing resolution. to On January 5, the Rules Committee for the House of Representatives introduced S. 139, the first proposed bill since that sunset and extension.

As-is, this bill would not reform NSA surveillance programs to be in line with the Constitution. In particular, it lacks a strong warrant requirement. As such, Restore the Fourth is not supporting this bill. Currently, we are asking people to contact their representatives and urge them to support the one amendment being allowed to S. 139, which would replace it with Rep. Justin Amash‘s excellent USA Rights Act. This would:

  • End backdoor searches and require warrants
  • Close a loophole where law enforcement could engage in ‘reverse targeting’ such that they ostensibly choose a foreign target when their true interest is a US citizen that target is communicating with
  • Codify the ban on ‘about collection’
  • Restore the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board’s authority to report on foreign surveillance programs

“The USA RIGHTS Act is the best chance for real reform in a decade. Congress should grab this chance to restore our lost liberties with both hands.” -Alex Marthews, National Chair, Restore the Fourth

 

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Restore the Fourth Files Amicus Brief in Carpenter v. USA

Tuesday, August 8th, 2017 – Restore the Fourth has filed an amicus curiae in the case of Timothy Ivory Carpenter v. United States of America. In this case, cell-site location information (CSLI) was obtained by subpoena from a cellphone carrier pertaining to the suspect’s cellphone.

In submitting this brief, we seek to urge the court on the following points:

  • From the nature of CSLI, it can be derived that privacy is relational: That is, that even when people disclose their information to third parties, that should not mean that they do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
  • CSLI will become more revealing over time: This is due to the increasing density of tower locations, and the increased power of computers to algorithmically parse a given set of information on people’s locations to predict where they will be in the future.
  • Police use of CSLI comes with a high risk of abuse: Such as, usage for LOVEINT (ie. officials with access to government surveillance and data collections utilizing it to spy on lovers, exes, etc.), police concealment of stingray use, and precedents for CLSI used to harass political dissidents abroad.

For these reasons, we urge that the Court should adopt a warrant standard for governmental searches and seizures of CSLI. We hope that the Court will see Carpenter v. USA as an opportunity to make a much-needed reexamination of the ‘third-party doctrine.’

Restore the Fourth would like to thank our counsel, Mahesha Subbaraman, of Subbaraman PLLC, for contributing this brief.

 

Please contact:

Alex Marthews

National Chair

rt4chair@protonmail.com

(781) 258-2936