The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) recently disclosed an opinion revealing that the FBI has repeatedly misused Section 702 of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to gather information in domestic investigations. Section 702 (sometimes referred to as the "PRISM" program) authorizes certain programs of surveillance of private communications for foreign intelligence purposes, without prior court approval, where the surveillance targets non-US persons located abroad. The law has been widely criticized, in part, because of the "backdoor search" loophole that allows domestic law enforcement officials to access Americans' communications without a warrant. The surveillance court previously found that the FBI's procedures for obtaining information through backdoor searches violated the Fourth Amendment. The newly published opinion demonstrates how the FBI has failed to reform these unlawful practices. An audit revealed that the agency searched FISA information 40 times last year while investigating a wide range of purely domestic crimes, including health-care fraud, gang violence, domestic terrorism by "racially motivated violent extremists," and public corruption. Again, the FISC expressed "concern[] about the [FBI's] apparent widespread [Section 702] violations." EPIC has long tracked FISA court orders and advocated for FISA reform. More recently, EPIC filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking disclosure of a report concerning FBI use of Section 702 authority for domestic criminal investigations and participated as amicus to address the scope of U.S. surveillance authorities in the Court of Justice of the European Union.
In a letter to the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, an EPIC-led coalition of privacy, civil liberties, and good government groups urged the Council to end the National Capital Region Facial Recognition System (NCR-FRILS) project and disclose all documents associated with it. In a Washington Post article covering the coalition letter, EPIC Senior Counsel, Jeramie Scott, argued that "facial recognition is a particularly invasive surveillance technology that undermines democracy and First Amendment rights." NCR-FRILS is a facial recognition system used by police departments and government agencies in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia area. The system runs comparisons against a database of 1.4 million local mug shots. The project was never publicly announced and was only revealed during the prosecution of a Black Lives Matter protester last fall. EPIC previously submitted a series of open government requests to police departments in the DC-area seeking more information on the system.
A new poll from Morning Consult found that 83% of voters say that Congress should pass national data privacy legislation this year. Democrats (86%) and Republicans (81%) expressed bipartisan support for Congress to prioritize a federal privacy bill. The poll also found that voters place similar amounts of responsibility on both federal and state lawmakers, as well as federal regulators, to regulate data privacy. With respect to regulating how companies collect, store, and share personal information, 72% of voters said Congress is either “very responsible” or “somewhat responsible” while 79% said the same for federal agencies and 75% for state governments. Nearly 9 in 10 adults said it was either “very” or “somewhat” important to protect their most sensitive identifiable information under a privacy law, including Social Security number (89%), banking information (89%), biometric data (88%), and driver’s license number (88%). EPIC has called for comprehensive baseline federal legislation and the creation of a U.S. data protection agency, and has advocated for strong state privacy laws.