A bipartisan coalition of civil liberty groups announced on Monday the creation of a new website dedicated to ending a controversial electronic surveillance law that’s set to expire next year unless Congress takes action.
The website, End702.com, is named eponymously for Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which authorizes two mass surveillance programs known as PRISM and Upstream. Together, the programs allow the CIA, FBI and NSA to capture more than 250 million exchanges that take place between users on platforms like Google, Facebook and Yahoo each year.
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The coalition to end the program is being led by Fight for the Future, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit.
“Now that we know how the government has abused the surveillance laws, Congress must start their review of Section 702 from where most Americans and organizations on the Left and the Right stand,” said Fight for the Future co-director Tiffiniy Cheng, who added that Americans agreed on “the constitutional right of everyone to not be warrantlessly surveilled.”
Section 702 was added to FISA by congressional amendments passed in 2008. However, the surveillance regime it authorized was hidden from the public until details were leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013.
Polling and research data collected in the years to follow suggest Web users have become more paranoid about their browsing habits and the possibility they’re being spied on, a consequence that Cheng said illustrated the need for reform.
“As data and privacy become a business liability, and as more people are targeted for their race or religion based on this data, the government’s programs on mass surveillance are becoming … politically toxic,” Cheng said, adding that “members of Congress or the White House will be embarrassed for supporting it.”
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Unless Congress votes to renew the law, it will sunset on Dec. 31, 2017. However, members in both chambers have expressed skepticism about the value of the law.
In April, a bipartisan 14-member group on the House Judiciary Committee asked that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper estimate the number of Americans being spied on. Clapper responded that he was still working on a method of coming up with a number.
Additional members of the coalition behind the critical new website include the American Civil Liberties Union, Access Now, Human Rights Watch, Campaign for Liberty, the Niskanen Center, Demand Progress and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
