March, 15 2021, 12:00am EDT
![Demand Progress](https://assets.rbl.ms/32012642/origin.jpg)
Former Sen. Udall and House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte Support Lawsuit to Reveal Details of Government's Secret Mass Surveillance
Former U.S. Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) and former House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) are supporting a lawsuit by Demand Progress Education Fund (DPEF) and the Project for Privacy and Surveillance Accountability (PPSA) filed against the Department of Justice in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. These two civil liberties organizations seek to compel the government to disclose whether it has secretly concluded it may conduct mass surveillance of people in the United States in the absence of Congressional authorization or court order.
WASHINGTON
Former U.S. Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) and former House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) are supporting a lawsuit by Demand Progress Education Fund (DPEF) and the Project for Privacy and Surveillance Accountability (PPSA) filed against the Department of Justice in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. These two civil liberties organizations seek to compel the government to disclose whether it has secretly concluded it may conduct mass surveillance of people in the United States in the absence of Congressional authorization or court order. This weekend, the two former members of Congress also published an op-ed about this issue.
"In October, Mark and I added our names to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Department of Justice, the FBI and other agencies asking for information about possible mass surveillance of American citizens," said Bob Goodlatte, senior policy advisor to PPSA. "They did not bother to reply. So Demand Progress Education Fund and PPSA are going to court to get answers to our questions."
The state of domestic intelligence surveillance is unclear with the expiration of Section 215, known as the "business records provision" of the PATRIOT Act (later amended and reauthorized by the USA FREEDOM Act). Section 215 governed the surveillance of a wide range of personal information held by businesses with an elastic standard: If the FBI asserted such data was relevant to a foreign intelligence investigation, it did not need a warrant to access it.
"What legal authority governs surveillance today?" Goodlatte asked. "The truth is, not even Congress is allowed to know. We do know that those in government and their defenders have sometimes claimed that they have an 'inherent' power to surveil Americans."
A fulsome response to the underlying DPEF/PPSA FOIA request (available here) would answer the following questions:
- Are the legal theories that previous administrations relied on to secretly conduct mass domestic surveillance of people in the United States still operative?
- One authority cited for this proposition by then-Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Richard Burr (R-NC), Executive Order 12333, is not a statute. What guidance is the government giving agencies on the limits of 12333?
- Is the government treating Americans' web browsing information as presumptively foreign, thereby avoiding privacy protections for people in the United States?
- Is the government relying on a legal theory - as it did at least from 2001 through 2004 - that its inherent authority displaces the rules of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act when the two conflict?
- Has the government secretly concluded that it may purchase information about people in the United States, for instance the enormous and growing troves held by data brokers, with no Congressional or judicial oversight?
"In December, the public learned that the whole time the DOJ and FBI were urging Congress to reauthorize the Patriot Act, more was at stake than even members of Congress knew," said former Senator Mark Udall, who served on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. "And since the partial Patriot Act sunset one year ago, the public also learned that the government has been secretly buying records about people in the United States without any Congressional authorization or judicial due process. This dangerous shell game of domestic mass surveillance must stop long enough for Congress to have its say: the stakes impact the privacy of every person in the United States."
"Every American is already concerned about the potential for misuse of the massive amounts of our data held by businesses, and clearly the problem is getting worse," Goodlatte said. "The American people deserve to know if our records are being accessed without Congressional authorization or judicial due process."
DPEF educates more than two million members and the general public about matters pertaining to the democratic nature of our nation's communications infrastructure and governance structures. PPSA is a nonpartisan group of U.S. citizens who advocate for greater protection of our privacy and civil liberties in government surveillance programs.
Background on the Issue
- A civil liberties coalition called for transparency in May;
- Sens. Leahy (D-VT) and Lee (R-UT) sent a letter in July to the AG and DNI raising concerns, asking a number of critical questions, and concluding reliance on inherent executive authority in lieu of Section 215 would be "plainly illegal";
- Rep. Lofgren (D-CA) asked related questions of Attorney General Barr at a hearing in July;
- A coalition further honed this fact-finding mission and thoroughly substantiated these concerns in August;
- Dozens of Representatives, led by Reps. Davidson (R-OH) and Jayapal (D-WA), further advanced these questions in a letter demanding answers in September; and
- In December, Charlie Savage of The New York Times broke the story that the government had secretly interpreted Section 215 of the Patriot Act as empowering the FBI to put a warrantless dragnet around a website. As Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) noted, there is no guarantee the FBI or NSA "wouldn't use the Patriot Act to intentionally collect Americans' web browsing information in the future."
The government has missed the relevant deadlines and refused to provide answers in every case.
In August, Rep. Eshoo (D-CA) also demanded information about what surveillance of the legislative and judicial branches has occurred. After being refused a substantive answer, she called on the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community to investigate the issue. Similarly, Reps. Eshoo and Rush (D-IL) and Senator Wyden (D-OR) just called on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to investigate executive branch surveillance of protesters.
The FOIA request is available here.
Additional context is available here.
Additional background on Section 215 is available at www.Section215.org.
Demand Progress amplifies the voice of the people -- and wields it to make government accountable and contest concentrated corporate power. Our mission is to protect the democratic character of the internet -- and wield it to contest concentrated corporate power and hold government accountable.
LATEST NEWS
US Voter Registrations Surge as Republicans Try to Limit Ballot Access
One group said it has registered over 100,000 new voters since U.S. President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race.
Jul 26, 2024
The group behind a popular get-out-the-vote technology platform said Friday that it's registered more than 100,000 new U.S. voters since President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, a surge that came amid mounting Republican efforts to make it harder to register and vote.
Vote.org said that 84% of voters registered in the new wave are under age 35. Nearly 1 in 5 new registrees is 18 years old. Andrea Hailey, the group's CEO, said that "since 2020, we have led the largest voter registration drive in U.S. history," with more than 7.8 million people registered.
After dropping out, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to face former Republican President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) in the November election. The new presumptive Democratic candidate has already earned endorsements from many Democrats in Congress and groups advocating on issues including climate, labor, and reproductive rights.
Vote.org's success comes as Republicans at the federal level are proposing and passing legislation creating obstacles to the ballot box.
Earlier this month, U.S. House Republicans passed Rep. Chip Roy's (R-Texas)
Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of American citizenship to vote in federal elections. Republicans claim the bill is meant to fix the virtually nonexistent "problem" of noncitizen voter fraud.
However, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.)
slammed the bill as a "xenophobic attack" meant to silence "Black voices, brown voices, LBGTQIA+ voices, [and] young voices."
Lee said the SAVE Act underscores the need to pass her recently introduced Right to Vote Act, "which would establish the first-ever affirmative federal voting rights guarantee, ensuring every citizen may exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot."
Earlier this year, U.S. Senate Democrats also reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation its sponsors say will "update and restore critical safeguards of the original Voting Rights Act."
Meanwhile, Republican-controlled state legislatures and red-state governors are enacting laws imposing tough restrictions on voter registration, with violations punishable by stiff fines that critics say are meant to dissuade people from registration drives and similar efforts.
Again under the guise of preventing fraud, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year signed legislation limiting voter registration drives, with fines of up to $250,000 for violators.
"These draconian laws and rules are like taking a sledgehammer to hit a flea," Cecile Scoon, an attorney and president of the Florida chapter of the League of Women Voters,
toldThe New York Times in an article published Friday.
Three years after Kansas passed a law making "false representation" of an election official a crime, campaigners say it's become extremely difficult to sign up new voters.
"In 2020, even with the pandemic, we had registered nearly 10,000 Kansans to vote. Now, we haven't been able to register anyone," Davis Hammet, president of the youth voter mobilization group Loud Light, told the Times.
In Louisiana, Republican state lawmakers quietly passed legislation making it easier for election officials to toss out absentee ballots with missing details, limiting how people can mail in other voters' ballots, and restricting the ability to assist people with disabilities with their ballots.
"What we've found is that these measures have a disproportionate impact on voters with disabilities, both Black and white," NAACP Legal Defense Fund senior policy counsel Jared Evans
toldNola.com earlier this week.
"It's clear that their goal is to make it harder to vote, harder for specific communities to vote especially," Evans added. "What they don't realize is that these laws hurt white voters, too."
In Nebraska, Republican Secretary of State Bob Evnen last week
ordered county election offices to stop registering voters with past felony convictions who have not received official pardons. The move came after the state's unicameral Legislature passed a bill granting voting eligibility to felons immediately after they have completed their sentences instead of waiting two years.
"We refuse to accept thousands of Nebraskans having their voting rights stripped away," ACLU of Nebraska legal and policy fellow Jane Seu said in a statement. "We are confident in the constitutionality of these laws, and we are exploring every option to ensure that Nebraskans who have done their time can vote."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Critics Warn Manchin-Barrasso Permitting Bill 'Is Taken Straight From Project 2025'
"You thought Project 2025 was just a threat after the election? It's actually happening *right now,*" said one climate campaigner.
Jul 26, 2024
Climate and environmental defenders on this week implored U.S. senators to block a permitting reform bill introduced this week by Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso that campaigners linked to Project 2025, a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right overhaul of the federal government.
Common Dreamsreported Monday that Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Barrasso (R-Wyo.)—respectively the chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee—introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) noted that although the proposal "includes several positive reforms for the accelerated development of transmission projects," it also advocates "limiting opportunities for communities to challenge projects, loosening oversight for drilling and mining projects, extending drilling permits and fast-tracking [liquified natural gas] permits, and several other provisions friendly to fossil fuel giants."
"This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
These are nearly identical policies to what's proposed in Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership. The plan, which was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, calls for "unleashing all of America's energy resources," including by ending federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands; limiting investments in renewable energy; and rolling back environmental permitting restrictions for new oil, gas, and coal projects, including power plants.
While Manchin has been trying—and failing—to pass fossil fuel-friendly permitting reform legislation for years, Brett Hartl, director of public affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that his "Frankenstein legislation is taken straight from Project 2025, and it's the biggest giveaway in decades to the fossil fuel industry."
Hartl said the bill "deprives communities of the power to defend themselves and gives that power to Big Oil by making it harder for communities to challenge polluting projects in court," and "prioritizes the profits of coal barons over public health."
"And it mandates oil and gas extraction in our oceans," he continued. "The insignificant crumbs thrown at renewable energy do nothing to address the climate emergency."
"Monday was the hottest day in recorded history," Hartl noted. "It's shocking that as the climate emergency continues to break records around us, the Senate continues to fast-track the fossil fuel expansion that is killing us. This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
Hartl added that "to preserve a livable planet," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "must squash this legislation now."
Manchin—who has said this will be his last term in office—has been a steadfast supporter of the fossil fuel industry, partly because his family owns a coal company. The senator says his permitting reform bill "will advance American energy once again to bring down prices, create domestic jobs, and allow us to continue in our role as a global energy leader."
However, Allie Rosenbluth, Oil Change International's U.S. manager, warned Thursday that "this bill is yet another dangerous attempt by Sen. Manchin to line the pockets of his fossil fuel donors, sacrificing communities and our climate along the way."
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else," she continued. "It would unleash more drilling on federal lands and waters, unnecessarily rush the review of proposed oil and gas export projects, and lift the Biden administration's pause on new LNG exports."
"We urge Congress to reject this proposal and commit to action that protects frontline communities from the impacts of fossil fuel development and the climate crisis," Rosenbluth added.
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else."
NRDC managing director of government affairs Alexandra Adams said Wednesday that "this bill is a giveaway for the oil and gas industry that will ramp up drilling and environmental destruction at a time when we need to be putting a hard stop to fossil fuels."
"We cannot afford to roll back so many of our bedrock environmental and community legal protections and offer a blank check to the oil and gas industry," she stressed. "We need new solutions for permitting if we are going to meet our clean energy potential and address the climate challenge. But this is not it."
"This bill would altogether be a leap backward on climate, health, and justice if passed into law," Adams added. "The Senate should reject it and look toward alternative solutions already being considered."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Nothing To Eat': War-Torn Sudan Faces Mass Famine as Military Delays Aid
Both parties in Sudan's civil war are to blame for a looming mass famine, experts say, and the military's blocking of U.N. aid at a border crossing with Chad exacerbates the problem.
Jul 26, 2024
Sudan's military is blocking United Nations aid trucks from entering at a key border crossing, causing severe disruptions in aid in a country that experts fear may be on the brink of one of the worst famines the world has seen in decades, The New York Timesreported Friday.
The border city of Adré in eastern Chad is the main international crossing into the Darfur region of Sudan, but the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the state's official military, which is engaged in a civil war with a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has refused to issue permits for U.N. trucks to enter there, as it's an RSF-controlled area.
U.S. and international officials have issued increasingly alarmed calls for steady aid access to help feed the millions of severely malnourished people in Darfur and other areas of Sudan.
Last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the U.N., said that the SAF's obstruction of the border was "completely unacceptable."
Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
The Sudanese who've made it out of the country and into Adré reported dire and unsafe conditions in their home country.
"We had nothing to eat," Bahja Muhakar, a Sudenese mother of three, told the Times after she crossed into Chad, following a harrowing six-day journey from Al-Fashir, a major city in Darfur. She said the family often had to live off of one shared pancake per day.
Another mother, Dahabaya Ibet, said that her 20-month-old boy had to bear witness to his grandfather being shot and killed in front of his eyes when the family home in Darfur was attacked by gunmen late last year.
Now the mothers and their families are refugees in Adré, where 200,000 Sudanese are living in an overcrowded, under-resourced transit camp.
In addition to those that have made it out of the country, there are 11 million people internally displaced within Sudan, most of whom have become displaced since the civil war began in April 2023.
An unnamed senior American official told the Times that the looming famine in Sudan could be as bad as the 2011 famine in Somalia or even the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.
In April, Reutersreported that people in Sudan were eating soil and leaves to survive, and The Washington Postcalled it a nation in "chaos," reporting that World Food Program trucks had been "blocked, hijacked, attacked, looted, and detained."
In late June, a coalition of U.N. agencies, aid groups, and governments warned that 755,000 people in Sudan faced famine in the coming months.
The U.S. last week announced $203 million in additional aid to Sudan—part of a $2.1 billion pledge that world leaders made in April, which some countries have not yet delivered on.
Some officials including Thomas-Greenfield, who has dubbed the situation in Sudan "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world," have called for the U.N. Security Council to allow aid delivery into the country even in the absence of SAF approval; it's believed that Russia would veto such a measure.
Sudan's civil war has seen a great deal of international interference. Amnesty International on Thursday published an investigatory briefing showing that weapons from Russia, China, Serbia, Turkey, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had been identified in the country. And The Guardian on Friday reported that the passports of Emirati citizens had been found among wreckage in Sudan, indicating the UAE may have troops or intelligence officers on the ground, though the UAE denied the accusation.
The International Service for Human Rights on Friday warned that both the SAF and RSF were engaged in wrongful killings and arrests, especially targeted at lawyers, doctors, and activists. The group called for an immediate cease-fire.
The SAF and Sudanese government figures have cast doubt on international experts' claims about famine in the country.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular