Eshoo Introduces Bill to End Surveillance of Americans by U.S. Intelligence Agencies

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Eight-year veteran of the House Intelligence Committee and current Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (CA-18) is part of a bipartisan group of over 70 House Members who introduced legislation to comprehensively reform U.S. national security laws and end the surveillance dragnet of Americans by the National Security Agency (NSA). This legislation, known as the USA FREEDOM Act, comes after revelations in recent months that the U.S. intelligence community has trampled on the personal privacy and civil liberties of Americans by regularly collecting their “metadata” telephone records. Metadata refers to telephone numbers, time and duration of phone calls.

“The NSA took advantage of the laws Congress wrote to spy on Americans, and it’s imperative to correct them,” Eshoo said. “This legislation ensures that surveillance of Americans ceases and puts in place safeguards to prevent this from happening again. The critical balance between national security and the constitutional rights of the American people must always be honored.”

Background:

The NSA claims authority for its surveillance programs under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act of 2001, but it was never the intent of Congress to allow the NSA to capture the communications of all Americans. The USA FREEDOM Act would end this suspicionless surveillance program by only allowing the NSA to obtain the records of individuals who are suspected of terrorism or have been in direct contact with such a person.

The legislation will also increase transparency at the secret court that reviews and approves the government’s surveillance requests. Currently, only the government can present evidence to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), with no one arguing on behalf of privacy interests. This has resulted in the approval of 99.7 percent of the government’s surveillance requests over the last three decades. The USA FREEDOM Act would create a Public Advocate to argue on behalf of the public interest before the FISC, and would require the court to publish declassified summaries of all its major decisions and interpretations of the law.

The USA FREEDOM Act would make several other reforms to shine light on our intelligence agencies, including allowing Internet companies to disclose estimates of the number of FISC orders they receive each year, and how many users are impacted. Leaked documents indicate that the NSA frequently obtains FISC orders to access the data of foreign users held by major Internet companies, but currently these companies are unable to publicly disclose anything about the nature or scope of these requests.

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