Bipartisan Support for Broad Privacy Debate Gains Momentum
A trio of House lawmakers said they want to debate the issue of government and corporate surveillance of Americans during separate interviews set to air this weekend on C-SPAN’s The Communicators. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo.; Justin Amash, R-Mich.; and Michael Capuano, D-Mass., spoke less than a fortnight after reports of an order by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) that gave the National Security Agency authority to collect phone metadata from millions of Verizon subscribers (CD June 7 p1) and the existence of a program authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that permitted NSA collection of Internet user data from non-U.S. citizens.
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Polis said America is leaning “too close to a police state, totalitarian side of things with regard to insufficient checks and balances around government checking emails, government checking phone records and those sorts of things. We need to balance it in a way similar to what we did traditionally during the height of the Cold War, the ‘70s and ‘80s.” Polis is a sponsor of the Limiting Internet and Blanket Electronic Review of Telecommunications and Email (LIBERT-E) Act, which would place restrictions on the government’s ability collect information on Americans under the Patriot Act. HR-2399 would also require congressional access to secret FISC opinions and declassified summaries of the opinions be made available to the public.
Amash, a co-sponsor of the LIBERT-E Act, said the legislation seeks to narrow the scope of the Patriot Act to only target those who are under investigation, “rather than sweeping up all communications.” Amash said the government’s current interpretation of the Patriot Act treats all phone records as relevant to investigating terrorism. “I am very confident the Supreme Court would strike down what we are doing now,” he said. “What we want to do is prevent this kind of collection of records. We believe it violates the Constitution, it violates the Fourth Amendment. And we don’t want this kind of information being held by the government.”
Capuano said the “whole panoply of invasions of privacy is long overdue for an honest discussion,” during a separate interview. “Privacy is about a person being able to control your own life with as much reasonable expectations you can have,” he said. “We have all come to understand there are cameras on the public street -- we all know that -- but when it comes time to have cameras in your own bedroom or your living room, I certainly think that should be your own choice.” Capuano introduced the We Are Watching You Act in June aimed at preventing companies from spying on consumers via their video devices (CD June 17 p14). The bill would ban video service operators from collecting visual and auditory information about consumers unless the company displays a message that says: “We Are Watching You” and provides consumers with information about the data collected.
Verizon, Sony and Microsoft have all filed patents for consumer products that monitor individuals from within their homes, Capuano said. “The patent applications are very scary and should be very scary to anyone that cares about privacy,” he said. “If the device sees you drinking a beer, it will send you an ad for Budweiser. If they see you cuddling, it will send you an add for marriage counseling or for contraception,” said Capuano. “Those are directly out of the patent application of one of the most famously known international corporations in the world. … I would argue that the average person should know that is happening and should have the choice to get out of it.”