Civil liberties group mobilizes against surveillance amendment

Civil liberties groups are mobilizing to get senators to oppose an amendment offered by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that would give the FBI more power to get a customer’s email records during terror investigations. 

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) plans to send lawmakers a recommendation Tuesday urging them to vote against the amendment that was filed as part of the Senate debate on the Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations bill. 

{mosads}”We are strongly opposed to the amendment,” said Neema Singh Guliani, an ACLU legislative counsel. 

McConnell filed the amendment Monday night, setting up a potential vote on the measure this week. 

He and a number of other high-profile Republicans are helping push the amendment. They include including Sens. John Cornyn (Texas), Chuck Grassley (Iowa), Orrin Hatch (Utah), John Thune (S.D.), John McCain (Ariz.), Marco Rubio (Fla.) and others.

The amendment would allow law enforcement to use government orders known as National Security Letters to force technology companies to hand over a customer’s email records — including who a person emailed and what time, as well as IP information and login history. The orders would not apply to the content of communications. 

Those orders are similar to administrative subpoenas and do not require court approval beforehand. The orders are used during terror and intelligence investigations and usually come with a gag order attached. 

The amendment would also make permanent a provision of law that gives the government greater surveillance authority over “lone wolves,” or those suspected of terrorism but who do not have formal ties to a terror group. 

Republican senators have been pushing the electronic records provision in a number of different places. A popular email privacy bill stalled in committee last month after a similar amendment was filed. The Intelligence Committee also recently passed an authorization bill with a similar provision about electronic records. 

FBI Director James Comey has asked senators for the update, saying that law enforcement is currently restricted because of a drafting error. He said the change would save a lot of work and re-upped the ask following the shooting in Florida. 

But privacy and civil liberties groups point to government reports that describe the FBI’s past abuse of National Security Letters. In a letter to senators last month, the ACLU said the expansion would give the FBI access to “intimate details of Americans without appropriate judicial oversight or accountability.”

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) also sounded the alarm last week, revealing that the amendment was coming and pre-emptively opposing it. 

“It’s important for colleagues in my view to see that this proposal would dramatically and unnecessarily expand the government’s ability to conduct surveillance of Americans without court oversight,” Wyden said. “In my judgment, it would not make our country safer.”