Media contact: Mark Stanley, 202.681.7582
Email: [email protected]
Today, 27 groups from across the political spectrum sent a letter to House leadership in support of the Massie-Lofgren amendment to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act. The amendment would defund warrantless government searches of the database of information collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, using U.S. person identifiers, absent certain circumstances. It would also prohibit the use of funds to require or request that U.S. persons and entities build security vulnerabilities into their products or services in order to facilitate government surveillance, except as provided for by the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. This amendment is identical to the Massie-Lofgren amendment that passed the House of Representatives by an overwhelming 293-vote majority in 2014.
The following statement can be attributed to Demand Progress Policy Director Daniel Schuman:
“The Massie-Lofgren amendment has wide, bipartisan support, as demonstrated by the array of groups that have signed this letter. The protections provided by the amendment against warrantless surveillance are an important step toward ending dragnet surveillance. Further, the amendment will help prevent security vulnerabilities in online services, which is necessary to protect public security and a benefit to the digital economy. Congressional leadership and members should throw their support behind this commonsense amendment to safeguard their constituents’ privacy rights.”
The full letter is here. Signatories are:
- American Civil Liberties Union
- Arab American Institute
- Bill of Rights Defense Committee
- Campaign for Liberty
- Constitutional Alliance
- Center for Democracy & Technology
- The Constitution Project
- Council on American-Islamic Relations
- CREDO Mobile
- Defending Dissent Foundation
- Demand Progress
- DownsizeDC.org, Inc.
- Fight for the Future
- Free Press Action Fund
- FreedomWorks
- Friends Committee on National Legislation
- Media Alliance
- New America’s Open Technology Institute
- OpenMedia.org
- OpenTheGovernment.org
- Project On Government Oversight (POGO)
- Restore The Fourth
- RootsAction.org
- Student Net Alliance
- Sunlight Foundation
- TechFreedom
- X-Lab
###