Internet Activists Rally Support to Defund NSA Phone Surveillance

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By Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai2013-07-23 20:33:19 UTC

Internet activists are once again rallying netizens to call their representatives. This time, they want Internet users to convince Congress to strip funding from the National Security Agency surveillance program that collects American's phone records.

The House will vote on Wednesday on an amendment (.PDF) to the defense spending bill that seeks to defund the NSA's phone metadata collection program, revealed in June by Edward Snowden, and stop the agency from collecting Americans' phone records unless they're targets of an investigation.

See also: Apple, Facebook, Civil Liberties Groups Demand More NSA Transparency

The amendment, introduced by Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) with bipartisan support, according to its summary, would end the authority "for the blanket collection of records under the Patriot Act," according to its summary. And it would bar "the NSA and other agencies from using Section 215 of the Patriot Act to collect records, including telephone call records, that pertain to persons who are not subject to an investigation under Section 215."

Section 215 of the Patriot Act, as Mashable has explained, is the provision underpinning the controversial program, which allows the U.S. government to request that businesses turn over "the production of any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items)," for national security-related investigations.

The program was revealed by a leaked court order, obtained by The Guardian , that was issued by the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). The order compelled Verizon Business to turn over the phone records of all its customers. It was later revealed that AT&T and Sprint have received similar orders, which have been renewed every three months, a practice that is believed to be ongoing since 2006.

The amendment will "likely" be debated and voted on Wednesday night, according to Amash's spokesperson, Will Adams.

A group of Internet activists has set up a website — DefundTheNSA.com — that allows citizens to easily get in touch with their representatives and lobby them to vote in favor of Amash's amendment. The site was created by four volunteers: Sina Khanifar, Thomas Davis, Jens Nockert, and Beau Gunderson.

They started working on it after Demand Progress' Executive Director David Segal asked them to promote the amendment, which was approved to go for a vote just Monday night. The four volunteers finished the site in less than five hours, and since its launch, it has received more than 50,000 visits, according to Khanifar.

Other Internet freedom activists have been pointing to the site and underlining the importance of the vote.

"Passage of the Amash amendment would send a clear message to the NSA and other intelligence agencies that the heyday of unchecked dragnet surveillance is coming to an end." Rainey Reitman, the Activism Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), wrote in a blog post.

The EFF is leading a coalition of 19 groups in a lawsuit against the NSA phone records collection program.

In a joint statement, senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) criticized the amendment, defining it as "unwise" as the program "has contributed to disrupting numerous terrorist attacks" against the U.S.

But not all senators are opposed to it.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who has been warning about the dangers of NSA's survelliance for years, applauded the fact that Congress is debating this program. In a speech at the liberal think thank the Center for American Progress, he said that this is something that couldn't have happened "seven, eight weeks ago."

"The combination of increasingly advanced technology with a breakdown in the checks and balances that limit government action could lead us to a surveillance state that cannot be reversed," Wyden said.

Image: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Topics: NSA, Politics, prism, privacy, surveillance, U.S., US & World