The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), alongside 10 other privacy and civil rights groups, is asking Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines and other intelligence officials to consider reforming the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA 702). FISA 702 allows the U.S. government to conduct surveillance and collect intelligence with the intent to protect Americans from terrorists, spies and other threats.
The DNI website states that FISA 702 "permits the government to conduct targeted surveillance of foreign persons located outside the United States, with the compelled assistance of electronic communication service providers, to acquire foreign intelligence information."
CDT and other groups including Americans For Prosperity, Due Process Institute, Electronic Information Privacy Center and Project on Government Oversight met with DNI Haines on Sept. 7 to discuss their concerns about FISA 702 and other surveillance issues, according to a press release from CDT.
“We appreciate DNI Haines taking time to hear our serious concerns with warrantless FISA 702 surveillance, but remain deeply distressed that the intelligence community will not commit to any of the meaningful reforms that are critical to protect Americans’ privacy," the organizations said in a joint statement after the meeting. "After years of misuse such as deliberately seeking out private messages of activists on the left and right, a batch of 19,000 campaign donors and lawmakers, it’s clear that FISA 702 and related surveillance powers need serious change. The administration and intelligence community must be willing to come to the table and accept significant new privacy protections that advocates, Congress and the American people are calling for. There simply isn’t a path to reauthorization built on half-measures, window dressing and codification of internal procedures that have repeatedly failed to protect Americans’ civil rights and civil liberties.”
The organizations said in a letter to Haines before the meeting that they believe FISA 702 "has been frequently and egregiously misused by elements of the Intelligence Community," according to a copy of the letter. They said FISA 702 should not be reauthorized unless several reforms are made, including requiring a warrant before Americans' communications are searched, closing a loophole that allows government agencies to buy Americans' data, strengthening the judicial review process for FISA-related proceedings and establishing "reasonable limits on the scope of intelligence surveillance."
