Once the government has gathered data under Section 702 for “foreign intelligence,” the FBI can search it for evidence of a criminal offense – any criminal offense. However, it may affect anyone who uses the internet or takes part in a phone call between the US and another country.
Human Rights Watch and others have highlighted the particular impact this “incidental” surveillance may have on immigrant and border communities in the United States. Executive branch officials have claimed it would not be feasible for them to provide estimates of the size of this “incidental” snooping on US persons, but David Medine, who then chaired the independent Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, testified before Congress in 2016 that it is “large” and might include “family photographs, love letters, personal financial matters, discussions of physical and mental health, and political and religious exchanges.” The government describes this surveillance of US persons as “incidental,” but it potentially includes a vast number of calls, e-mails, chats, text messages, and other conversations. However, this restriction leaves plenty of legal room for the government to sweep up potentially huge numbers of communications to or from Americans. “US person” is a legal term that includes US citizens and green-card holders as well as some corporations and associations.īy law, the government must adopt “targeting procedures” that are “reasonably designed” to prevent it from gathering communications that are solely between people the intelligence agencies know to be in the United States – or US persons abroad. Although the government cannot designate “United States persons” as the “targets” of its warrantless Section 702 monitoring, it can still capture or scan their internet or telephone conversations as part of this surveillance. It also jeopardizes free-expression rights, since people who know the government may spy on them without good reason may be less likely to express or explore controversial views or discuss sensitive personal matters.ĭoes the government monitor US citizens under Section 702? In authorizing massive surveillance programs and failing to put strong safeguards in place to prevent the abuse of these highly intrusive monitoring powers, the law violates the human right to privacy. Originally adopted in 2008 and renewed in 2012, Section 702 will expire on December 31, 2017, unless Congress passes legislation to re-authorize it. The second program, known as “upstream” scanning, appears to involve automatic government searches of virtually all of the communications that flow over crucial pieces of internet infrastructure that connect the US to the rest of the world. One is PRISM, which enables the National Security Agency (NSA), with the assistance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), to gather and store enormous quantities of users’ communications held by internet companies such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook. The law currently underpins two of the most sweeping warrantless NSA surveillance programs that collect the substance of communications by people in the US and across the globe. Bush-era secret surveillance program that monitored the international communications of people in the United States. Section 702 of FISA allows the US government to spy on the internet and telephone communications of people both in the United States and abroad without a warrant so long as a “significant” purpose of the surveillance is to gather “foreign intelligence information.” It grew out of a George W. This surveillance affects people both within the United States and in other countries. The law enables the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other US bodies to gather and/or search private communications without a warrant. Section 702 of the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a warrantless surveillance law that underpins two massive internet and telephone monitoring programs, will expire on December 31, 2017, unless Congress renews it. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) building in Washington, DC.
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