When we learned about rampid covert government surveillance of US citizens, Congress gave us FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The Act was structured to limit how and when the FBI, CIA, NSA and other agencies could spy on the American people. Since that legislation draft back in 1978. However, surveillance techniques have evolved. Also in the wake of 911. Restrictions on spying have relaxed as the alphabet of defense agencies have expanded with the DHS and the DOD and so on. So here we are in 2023. With the government now surveilling people sounds warrant basically respecting privacy rights, like Trump respects gag orders, we need to push back. Specifically, we need to support the government surveillance Reform Act of 2023 gsra They call it the bipartisan legislation that was put up in the Senate last week takes FISA a step further by preventing abuses of power while taking us a step back in terms of reversing the erosion of privacy rights. This legislation would be a big deal as law enforcement illegal surveillance has been a big problem. According to a report recently released by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, intelligence officials conducted more than 200,000 purportedly inadvertent searches of Americans communications in just 2022 alone, and that was a stark improvement from previous years. It was in fact a 98% improvement to be exact, before being reined in by the FISA court for persistent and widespread FISA violations. The FBI was intercepting communications of hundreds of 1000s of Americans from social justice protesters to members of Congress to congressional campaign donors. Everybody’s business was in these government streets. I’m talking about warrantless search. I’m talking like all the time. It’s like the Fourth Amendment was merely advisory for the feds, and all they had to offer us in response was oops, we the people deserve better. Like actual privacy rights. We deserve to know that the intelligence community isn’t simply trimming a little fat off of the constitution so it can surveil my DNS. If passed the gsra would help curb such abuses. It will require officials to obtain a warrant and a criminal or FISA court before performing searches for Americans communications. Last I checked that would simply be complying with the Fourth Amendment, but hey, I will take it at this point.
The gsra also would prohibit agencies from accessing and buying databases of vast amounts of highly sensitive information on Americans. You know, because capitalism is king and everything’s for sale, this data broker business has been going on behind closed doors for decades now giving law enforcement a workaround to otherwise warrant requisite searches. Another pivotal part of gsra is a provision that would restrict law enforcement ability to capture location information from cell phones, car computers and other digital signals without a warrant. None of these proposed changes are wild. Perhaps that’s why both Republicans and Democrats in the Senate can get behind it. But now we must as citizens do the same by contacting our representatives, demanding they support the gsra slicer was good for where we were back in 78. But we need legislation that aligns with the times and the government level of abuses. Because no matter how many decades pass, protecting privacy rights never goes out of style,
