Surveillance

Apparently, the Trump administration has signaled in recent weeks that it may seek the permanent renewal of a surveillance law that has, among other things, enabled the National Security Agency to gather and analyze Americans’ phone records as part of terrorism investigations. The White House was prepared to issue a public statement calling on Congress to reauthorize in full Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which in the past has been the focus of heated debate over the acceptable bounds of government surveillance.

Apparently, the National Security Agency has recommended that the White House abandon a US surveillance program that collects information about Americans’ phone calls and text messages, saying the logistical and legal burdens of keeping it outweigh its intelligence benefits. The recommendation against seeking the renewal of the once-secret spying program amounts to an about-face by the agency, which had long argued in public and to congressional overseers that the program was vital to the task of finding and disrupting terrorism plots against the US.

In an era of ubiquitous data gathering by tech companies, your personal information — where you go, who your friends are, what you read, eat and watch, and when you do it — is being used for purposes many people never expected. As privacy concerns have mounted among consumers, policymakers and regulators, tech companies have come under intensifying scrutiny over their data collection practices. Technology companies have for years responded to court orders for specific users’ information. The new warrants go further, suggesting possible suspects and witnesses in the absence of other clues.

An Ilinois bill that sought to empower average people to file lawsuits against tech companies for recording them without their knowledge via microphone-enabled devices was defanged this week after lobbying from trade associations representing Silicon Valley giants. On April 10, the Illinois State Senate passed the Keep Internet Devices Safe Act, a bill that would ban manufacturers of devices that can record audio from doing so remotely without disclosing it to the customer.

Sens Ron Wyden (D-OR), Rand Paul (R-KY), Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Steve Daines (R-MT) asked the Department of Justice a series of questions about when and how the government can collect information about Americans’ location, in a bipartisan letter to Attorney General William Barr. The senators asked Attorney General Barr how the Supreme Court’s decision in Carpenter v. United States, that the government must get a warrant to obtain location information about Americans in most circumstances, has impacted federal government surveillance, including by the National Security Agency.

Sophisticated surveillance, once the domain of world powers, is increasingly available on the private market. Smaller countries are seizing on the tools — sometimes for darker purposes.

Attorney General William Barr has asserted the state secrets privilege for the first known time since he was sworn in in Feb, using the controversial legal tool in a lawsuit brought by the social media company Twitter over its bid to publish a more complete account of government surveillance requests.

The United States and its allies are arguing over whether governments should use telecommunications equipment manufactured by Huawei. However, 5G is not the only important communications network. In other parts of the world such as Latin America and Africa, Huawei is laying the submarine cables that carry most long-distance communications traffic.

The National Security Agency has quietly shut down a system that analyzes logs of Americans’ domestic calls and texts, according to a senior Republican congressional aide, halting a program that has touched off disputes about privacy and the rule of law since the Sept. 11 attacks. The agency has not used the system in months, and the Trump administration might not ask Congress to renew its legal authority, which is set to expire at the end of the year, according to the aide, Luke Murry, the House minority leader’s national security adviser.

As the US pushes ahead with the “Cloud Act” it enacted about a year ago, Europe is scrambling to curb its reach. Under the act, all US cloud service providers from Microsoft and IBM to Amazon -- when ordered -- have to provide American authorities data stored on their servers regardless of where it’s housed. With those providers controlling much of the cloud market in Europe, the act could potentially give the US the right to access information on large swaths of the region’s people and companies. The US says the act is aimed at aiding investigations.