 We have reached a kind of inflection point in the privacy debate because what we know based on this pandemic is there are going to be a lot more people sheltered at home. And from the moment they get up in the morning until the moment they go to bed at night, the internet is arguably the biggest aspect of their life in terms of communicating with people. They shouldn't have their most intimate information spied on, snooped over by the federal government without a warrant. Before the Senate voted to reauthorize the USA Freedom Act, formerly known as the Patriot Act on May 14th, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden fought a losing battle to rein in the broad authority that it gives US intelligence agencies to spy on the web activities of American citizens. I think it would be hugely chilling in terms of people's ability to freely access the information that they most want to see that is private and personal. It might be your dating history. It might be religious beliefs. It might be your fears, the most private data. It's like data mining of somebody's thoughts. The Democrat Wyden, along with his Republican colleague Steve Daines, tried attaching an amendment to the bill that would have explicitly banned government agents from collecting Americans' web search histories without a warrant from a non-fISA court. Now, an anti-surveillance activist group called Fight for the Future is trying to convince Nancy Pelosi and congressional Democrats to add the same amendment to the House version of the bill. But in a political world where Democrats regularly call the president a power abusing authoritarian in the making, the president has engaged in abusive power undermining our national security. Our democracy is at peril. And Republicans bemoan a deep state plot to take down Trump. It looks to me like another deep state attack. Democrats are working together with the deep state to discredit the duly elected president of the United States. There's still only weak support for concrete measures to rein in the post-911 surveillance state. Nancy Pelosi has spent the last several years saying that this administration is dangerous. She impeached the president for abusive power. If she doesn't take this opportunity to get this amendment in place that at least puts some limit on this administration's surveillance authority, it's hard not to feel like the entire resistance rhetoric has been a bit of a scam. Evan Greer is Fight for the Future's deputy director. She literally can just tack on this amendment. It'll get a vote. It'll go back to the Senate. It'll pass the Senate. And we can actually get one small piece of this mess fixed once and for all. But Greer says congressional leaders have shown little interest in restricting the power of U.S. intelligence agencies. There's actually a lot of appetite from members of both parties to rein in some of these overly broad surveillance programs. And it has been leadership on both sides. Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff on the Democratic side, Mitch McConnell on the Republican side has been incredibly pro-surveillance. Really, it has been leadership that have repeatedly undermined good faith attempts to reform some of these laws, to bring them up to date, to protect people's privacy. This is fundamentally a question of whether officials like Bill Barr should have the authority to in effect spy on law-abiding Americans. These millions of people who newly spend many, many hours a day at home sheltering in place, their privacy rights shouldn't just be, you know, tossed aside. Senator Wyden has often been sort of a bit of a canary in the coal mine on things like this in terms of he'll ask very specific questions of intelligence officials when they come on it on the hill that sort of get at some of these things. Greer says Wyden's introduction of the amendment could be a way of alerting the public that intelligence agencies have already been collecting U.S. citizens' web search data. Wyden can't say it explicitly because that information would be classified. Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans? It would be a repeat of what happened in 2013 when Wyden questioned Director of National Intelligence James Clapper with the intention of tipping off the public that the government was engaged in bulk collection of phone data. No, sir. It does not. Not wittingly. I know that often you're dealing with classified information, so you might be limited in what you can speak to, but is there any reason to believe that this is actually happening? I can't get into intelligence matters, but just yesterday I inquired as to that data, whether we can get it, what it's being used for, and we can make that kind of information public because I believe there's a reporting requirement. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell opposed Wyden in the Senate, claiming that additional limitations to the nation's surveillance laws would jeopardize important tools that keep America safe. First of all, that's just flatly inaccurate. Wyden says his amendment addresses McConnell's national security concerns because in a crisis, law enforcement agencies would still be allowed to gather intelligence before obtaining a warrant. If someone in law enforcement believes that there is a bomb outside Louisville, law enforcement can go and immediately collect the information that is needed to protect the people and come back after the fact and settle up on the warrant. So I think that alone shows why Mitch McConnell's argument's off base. A more modest Senate amendment requiring FISA court's hear analysis from opposing parties such as the ACLU was included in the version of the bill that passed. I have an amendment that would take Americans out of it. I don't think it's constitutional to invest Americans, particularly American campaigns with the secret court. I think it uses a less than constitutional standard. But Rand Paul's more radical effort to eliminate the surveillance of American citizens altogether without a warrant from a non-FISA court was defeated, even Wyden voted against it. Senator Paul started an important conversation with respect to whether the whole framework needs to be reconsidered. So this is a conversation that I consider very important and I've told him that. Right now, I think I've got my hands full trying to make the many reforms that are needed in FISA immediately. Greer encourages anyone concerned about government surveillance of what citizens are searching for on the web to call Nancy Pelosi's office and pressure her to put a version of the Wyden-Daines amendment, one of which is reportedly being drafted by Representative Zoe Lofgren and Representative Warren Davidson back in the bill. We'll give you a short script of kind of what to say and we'll connect you directly to Speaker Pelosi's office. This is incredibly relevant to the situation that we're in now. And it's really important that we remind lawmakers that the public does care about our right to be free from overly broad and intrusive surveillance.