Hello All,

Earlier this month, the Wikimedia Foundation, along with a coalition of 43 civil liberties, civil rights, and transparency organizations, signed a letter https://s3.amazonaws.com/demandprogress/letters/Orgs_endorse_USA_Rights_amendment_and_oppose_unaltered_FISA_Authorization_bill_2018-01-10.pdf urging Congress to reform Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act_of_1978_Amendments_Act_of_2008, the law that allegedly authorizes the mass surveillance challenged in our lawsuit, Wikimedia Foundation v. National Security Agency https://policy.wikimedia.org/stopsurveillance/. In the letter, we urged Congress to oppose a straightforward reauthorization of the law and to support meaningful reforms.

On January 11th, the U.S. House of Representatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives quashed the opportunity for those reforms by voting to reauthorize Section 702 with minimal changes. The bill then went to the U.S. Senate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate for further consideration. Despite opposition in the Senate from both major political parties, on January 16th, a filibuster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster to block the bill narrowly failed. Yesterday, the bill cleared the Senate, and it was signed into law today https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2018/01/19/technology/19reuters-usa-trump-cyber-surveillance.html.

Although we are deeply disappointed in this result, the Wikimedia Foundation will continue to fight for user privacy, including in Wikimedia Foundation v. NSA. We will keep you updated on further developments.

Best, Stephen