The national security state keeps humming with little regard for the privacy rights and due process granted by law to Americans.
Law enforcement is fighting to preserve a loophole to obtain emails without a warrant while trying to widen their ability to subvert the necessity of a court order, according to Reason.
“The FBI is trying to write up special new rules that would let them use a National Security Letter (NSL) to get access to email records without any sort of court order,” Scott Shackford wrote.
Created by the PATRIOT Act, NSLs are secret, allow the government to gag companies about their existence, and strengthen the ability of law enforcement to conduct unwarranted surveillance on a massive level.
The legislation that would authorize the rules revision, the 2017 Intelligence Authorization Act, had one opponent in the Senate Intelligence Committee. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) called the rules “dangerous provisions.”
“This bill would mean more government surveillance of Americans, less due process and less independent oversight of U.S. intelligence agencies,” Wyden declared in a statement. “Worse, neither the intelligence agencies, nor the bill’s sponsors have shown any evidence that these changes would do anything to make Americans more secure.”
When it comes to arguments surrounding national security, intelligence agencies rarely provide the evidence Wyden would like. The evidence is classified, the argument goes, and revealing it would put the integrity of national security practices at risk.
That lack of information doesn’t seem to concern the American public. According to a Pew survey, 56 percent of Americans said the government’s anti-terrorism policies have “not gone far enough to protect the country,” compared with 28 percent who thought they had “gone too far in restricting civil liberties.” Pew has asked that survey question since 2004 and civil liberties concerns were higher than concerns about protecting the country in 2012 and 2013 only.
Americans have been more suspicious of government surveillance since the Edward Snowden NSA leaks in 2013, but that hasn’t materialized into broad opposition against the increase in federal snooping powers.
