Hello friends

As some of you may know, in the U.S., Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act_of_1978_Amendments_Act_of_2008 is up for reauthorization at the end of this year. This is the statute that allegedly authorizes the U.S. National Security Agency’s mass surveillance practices being challenged in Wikimedia Foundation v. NSA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_v._NSA.[1] We briefly mentioned the impending reauthorization debate in our most recent blog post https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/06/23/wikimedia-v-nsa-present-future/ about the case.

While we firmly believe that mass surveillance is unconstitutional and unethical, we are also monitoring the legislative debate around the reauthorization of Section 702. Courts must evaluate the NSA’s surveillance practices, but we also believe that certain reforms to Section 702 could be a positive step forward.

One major issue on the agenda is what’s called the “backdoor search” loophole. After the U.S. government amasses a vast amount of sensitive internet communications, agents are allowed to search through databases of these communications for individuals’ personal information, including the personal information of U.S. citizens and residents. One problem here is that they don’t need a warrant for this, which allows them to perform searches without judicial oversight or a need to demonstrate probable cause.

To be sure, we believe that the government’s initial mass collection of these communications is illegal per se. However, as the ACLU’s Ashley Gorski has observed https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/privacy-and-surveillance/time-reform-debate-new-documents-shed-light, backdoor searches of Americans’ communications compound the legal problems associated with the U.S. government’s implementation of Section 702. We think that closing the backdoor search loophole would be a small but significant step towards addressing these many legal problems identified by the ACLU. In addition, while the lack of a warrant requirement primarily implicates the communications of American citizens and residents, we are aware that the communications of people around the world are swept up by this surveillance. We consider this to be a violation of the human rights to privacy and freedom of expression.

Mass surveillance, by any government, and no matter the location of those subjected to it, is repugnant to the spirit of the Wikimedia movement. We believe that everyone should be free to read and share knowledge https://policy.wikimedia.org/policy-landing/privacy/ without government monitoring.

Regards,

Jan

[1] You can read more about the case on our landing page https://policy.wikimedia.org/stopsurveillance/.

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Jan Gerlach Public Policy Manager Wikimedia Foundation *new address (Oct. 2, 2017)*: 1 New Montgomery Street, Suite 1600 San Francisco, CA 94104 jgerlach@wikimedia.org