Wednesday, August 7, 2013

The NSA Unchained


Contrary to what defenders of the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs would have us believe, the communications of each and every one of us are clearly vulnerable to government spying.

As we have learned from recent media disclosures, under the Patriot Act, the government has been secretly tracking the calls of customers of major telecommunications companies for years. And under the unconstitutional FISA Amendments Act, the NSA obtains the contents of online communications from many of the Internet companies we have come to rely on for our basic, day-to-day interactions, like Google and Facebook. The government can access much of this incredibly sensitive data about people – including the contents of Americans’ communications with people overseas – whom it does not suspect of any wrongdoing, and without any meaningful judicial oversight. As an advocate for the constitutional right to privacy from government intrusion, this is cause for major concern. 
 
The more we learn about these programs, the more it becomes clear that the surveillance state is upon us. But we have the power to stop it. Congress must rein in government spying by fixing the Patriot Act and FISA and providing a full public accounting of the NSA’s data collection program. 
 
In the wake of the recent revelations about the NSA's unprecedented mass surveillance of phone calls, the ACLU filed a lawsuit charging that the program violates Americans' constitutional rights of free speech, association, and privacy. Learn more about the ACLU’s effort to stop the NSA.