Patriot Act

They’re Watching: FBI Business Records Requests Jump 900 Percent Compared to 2009

By Robyn Greene, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 12:14pm

Last week served as yet another reminder of the threats posed to Americans' privacy by the post-Patriot Act surveillance state...

The PATRIOT Act’s Section 215 Must be Reformed

By Laura W. Murphy, Director, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 3:16pm

The following remarks were given by Laura Murphy, director of the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office, at Sen. Rand Paul's press conference yesterday announcing his intention to sue the government to stop NSA surveillance of Americans' communications.

Last week, the Guardian reported something extraordinary. The National Security Agency is routinely collecting all of your phone records under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. They know who calls whom, when, for how long and from where. There's no more debate about whether the government is spying on Americans; the only question is how we can stop it.

ACLU Files Lawsuit Challenging NSA's Patriot Act Phone Surveillance

By Brett Max Kaufman, Legal Fellow, ACLU National Security Project at 3:30pm

In the wake of the past week's revelations about the NSA's unprecedented mass surveillance of phone calls, today the ACLU filed a lawsuit charging that the program violates Americans' constitutional rights of free speech, association, and privacy.

This lawsuit comes a day after we submitted a motion to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) seeking the release of secret court opinions on the Patriot Act's Section 215, which has been interpreted to authorize this warrantless and suspicionless collection of phone records.

ACLU in POLITICO: Roll Back the Surveillance State

By Laura W. Murphy, Director, ACLU Washington Legislative Office & Michelle Richardson, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 2:13pm

Because of the extraordinary revelations last week by the Guardian, Congress and the American people now know that the Patriot Act is being used by the National Security Agency to collect the phone records of all Americans, every day. There's no more debate about whether the government, and the military at that, is spying on us: only whether Congress is going to stop them.

Section 215 of the Patriot Act allows the government to obtain ‘any tangible thing' relevant to an investigation. According to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, this authority has been used to collect all phone records in the U.S., even those of law-abiding citizens who have no connection to crime or terrorism whatsoever. The administration and a few members of Congress have confirmed and defended this practice as necessary to protect national security.

But there's no reason to believe that the government's collection efforts stop there.

Read the rest of the piece at POLITICO: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/roll-back-the-surveillance-state-92550.html

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Checks, Balances, and the National Security Agency

By Jameel Jaffer, Deputy Legal Director, ACLU & Ben Wizner, Director, ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project at 10:14am

Over the course of three days, the usually invisible National Security Agency has become ostentatiously visible and many Americans...

DOJ Tells Court It's Reconsidering Secrecy Surrounding Patriot Act's Spying Powers

By Alex Abdo, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 4:46pm

With a filing due next week in an ACLU Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the Justice Department today...

The NSA Surveillance Order, Explained by the ACLU

By Alex Abdo, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 5:58pm

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order released yesterday by The Guardian reveals that the U.S. government is regularly tracking the phone calls of potentially millions of Americans.

ACLU attorneys have been monitoring the U.S. government’s use of the Patriot Act for years, and this document confirms our biggest fears. Have a look at the notes we’ve made on the court order to see how we understand what it says about the powers the government claims. (Just click on the document below and hover on the red dots to see our comments. This embed will serve content from thinglink.com.)

More Transparency Needed For Government's Use of National Security Powers For Data Requests From Companies

By Alex Abdo, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 2:27pm

Google's transparency report reveals that the U.S. government asked Google for data on its users 6,321 times during the second half of 2011—a 75% increase from two years ago.

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