Google Asks Users To Demand Congress Pass Real Surveillance Reform

Privacy

from the more-companies-need-to-speak-out dept

As we’ve mentioned, the USA Freedom Act — which had been the “good” bill to reform some of the NSA’s domestic spying activities — was completely watered down right before it passed the House. Basically the entire civil liberties community pulled their support for the bill at the last minute once they saw the changes that the White House demanded (even after the bill had already been watered down). What got a little less attention was that many in the tech industry had also dropped their support for the bill, despite earlier supporting it.

With the fight to fix the bill now moving to the Senate, Google has apparently decided to ramp up its activism on getting a much better bill out there. Google’s main Twitter account announced that it wants real reform and linked people to a “take action” page that trashes the bill that passed the House and asks people to sign on to support real reform in the Senate:

It’s been a year since Edward Snowden shocked the world with his deeply troubling revelations about the extent of U.S. government surveillance.

The House of Representatives just passed a bill called the USA FREEDOM Act. That bill was designed to prevent the bulk collection of Internet data (e.g., who you email and who emails you) by the U.S. Government. This kind of surveillance — where data may be collected for no specific intelligence purpose and without effective judicial oversight — runs counter to our democratic principles.

Unfortunately, as the bill made its way through Congress, the text was watered down so badly that it will not prevent bulk Internet data collection. For example, as the bill stands today it could still permit the collection of email records from everyone who uses a particular email service. As the legislation moves over to the Senate, it is critical that this loophole be closed. We need real surveillance reform urgently.

If the Senate is actually going to resist the White House’s demands for a watered down bill, we’re going to need a lot more partnerships like this: companies and individuals together speaking out about how bulk surveillance by the NSA is simply unacceptable. The NSA has already managed to poison the well for tech companies overseas by basically telling the world that their data is simply not secure. These companies and their customers and users need to let the government know that this needs to stop now. Hoping, quietly, that these issues will go away isn’t going to do the trick. Hopefully more companies will speak up as well.

Filed Under: activism, congress, reform, surveillance, usa freedom act
Companies: google