Anti-surveillance tech coalition grows

A tech industry coalition dedicated to reining in government spying is adding a new member.

Note-taking service Evernote is joining Facebook, Google, Microsoft and six other tech giants as the 10th member of the Reform Government Surveillance coalition, an official told The Hill.

{mosads}The other members of the coalition are AOL, Apple, Dropbox, LindedIn, Twitter and Yahoo.

The coalition was formally launched in December, in the wake of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s revelations that the NSA was snooping on the online communications of people around the world.

Snowden’s disclosures have caused a dramatic drop-off in global public trust of American companies, which is expected to translate to billions of dollars in lost profits. In response, many companies have focused on legislative reforms to U.S. snooping, and the Reform Government Surveillance coalition is the industry’s most concerted effort on that front.

This month, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt warned that the U.S.’s spying could “end up breaking the Internet,” since other countries have begun to enact restrictive measures on where companies keep their data. 

The tech coalition has hired lobbyists to push Congress to support the USA Freedom Act, an NSA reform bill that would end the agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records. The bill is the subject of negotiations in the Senate, after the House passed a version earlier this year that many said was too watered down.

The legislation has won support from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, civil liberties advocates and the Obama administration, though it still faces an uphill battle in the chamber due to opposition from some hawkish legislators.