The Federal Government’s Privacy Watchdog Concedes: 702 Must Change

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) has released its much-anticipated report on Section 702, a legal authority that allows the government to collect a massive amount of digital communications around the world and in the U.S. The PCLOB agreed with EFF and organizations across the political spectrum that the program requires significant reforms if it is to be renewed before its December 31, 2023 expiration. Of course, EFF believes that Congress should go further–including letting the program expire–in order to restore the privacy being denied to anyone whose communications cross international boundaries. 

PCLOB is an organization within the federal government appointed to monitor the impact of national security and law enforcement programs and techniques on civil liberties and privacy. Despite this mandate, the board has a history of tipping the scales in favor of the privacy annihilating status quo. This history is exactly why the recommendations in their new report are such a big deal: the report says Congress should require individualized authorization from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) for any searches of 702 databases for U.S. persons. Oversight, even by the secretive FISC, would be a departure from the current system, in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation can, without warrant or oversight, search for communications to or from anyone of the millions of people in the United States whose communications have been  vacuumed up by the mass surveillance program.

The report also recommends a permanent end to the legal authority that allows This article has been indexed from Deeplinks