Tag: NSA

With limited time left in the legislative calendar for this Congress, it is time for an assessment of priorities. To start, we need to reign in the NSA’s privacy-violating surveillance programs. The USA FREEDOM Act would limit, instead of expand, the government’s intake of user information. It should be a priority for the outgoing Congress. And yet, priorities seems to be elsewhere.

The global population has become collateral damage in the race to collect surveillance data

As the International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance make clear, the preservation of the integrity of communications and systems is a key obligation under international law. Just as it would be unreasonable for governments to insist that all residents of houses should leave their doors unlocked just in case the police need to search a particular property, or to require all persons to install surveillance cameras in their houses on the basis that it might be useful to future prosecutions, it is equally disproportionate for governments to interfere with the integrity of everyone’s communications in order to facilitate its investigations or to require the identification of users as a precondition for service provision or the retention of all customer data.

Access has convened a coalition of digital rights groups to urge the Obama Administration to reform Executive Order 12333, which authorizes mass surveillance by NSA and other intelligence agencies with no meaningful limits.

Access, joined by members of Congress, former government officials, and dozens of civil society groups and private companies, has urged the Obama Administration to reform surveillance practices under Executive Order 12333, which authorizes mass surveillance by NSA and other intelligence agencies with no meaningful limits.

In a recent interview, former National Security Agency contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the Syrian government was not to blame for a nationwide internet blackout on Nov. 29, 2012, the NSA was.

In response to stories in the New York Times, ProPublica, and the Guardian that the National Security Agency (“NSA”) was undermining encryption standards, The Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology (VCAT) released a report that called for increased transparency and internal expertise at the National Institute for Standards and Technologies (“NIST”). The VCAT reviews and makes recommendations regarding general policy for the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The VCAT formed a Committee of Visitors (“COV”) in mid-April to review the relationship between NIST and the NSA.

Access condemns the FBI and NSA’s targeted surveillance of community leaders and thousands of others without due process.

Having passed the House of Representatives with overwhelming support, bill heads to the Senate in need of leaders to sponsor important amendments restricting NSA surveillance activities.

Access calls on the Executive Branch to seize the opportunity to end the NSA’s bulk telephony collection program this week.