It Is Up to the House to Keep the Promise to Curtail the “Make Everyone a Spy” Law

Congress made a solemn promise on surveillance reform to the American people in public, only to break it in private. As a result, the “Make Everyone a Spy” provision allows the government to conscript office-space providers – including those who rent space to media organizations, law firms, and political campaigns – into enabling warrantless surveillance through their buildings’ internet networks. Even churches and other houses of worship can be targeted.
 
As the House debates the reauthorization of Section 702, PPSA and our followers call on House leadership to deliver on this very public promise to narrow the provisions of a loophole in the definition of government electronic communications service providers (ECSP) in Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
How We Got Here
 
When FISA Section 702 was reauthorized in 2024, it included a provision that was intended to allow the government to compel the cooperation of one particular type of company, believed to be providers of cloud computing, to respond to requests for data for national security purposes. The broad language of this provision, however, allows the National Security Agency to secretly demand access to communications equipment from almost every U.S. business or non-profit organization.
During the Senate debate on this intelligence legislation in 2024, key lawmakers admitted that their draft language was overly broad. They insisted there was no time to fix it, but assured their colleagues that after passage they would work to narrow the ECSP language, making a “technical fix” to ensure that only appropriate entities could be compelled to assist in surveillance. House Intelligence Committee leaders indicated openness to that correction, calling it “totally fine.” 
 
As the U.S. House of Representatives once again moves forward on the next reauthorization of Section 702, that promised fix has been ignored by both houses of Congress for two years.
 
Basic Liberties at Stake
The ability to surveil foreign threats is vital to protecting the homeland and the American people. But PPSA is firm in the conviction that we can have robust surveillance of terrorist and cybersecurity threats without allowing our government to regularly spy on the American people – especially with massive databases supercharged by AI.
For that reason, we ask House leadership to embrace several key reforms.
 
·      First, warrants must be required before Americans’ communications, swept up in NSA’s global trawl, can be accessed by the government.
 
·      Second, the secret FISA courts should be required to rely on qualified amici – civil liberties experts with high-level security clearances – to represent the larger constitutional concerns of the American people in sensitive cases.
 
·      Third, the House should close the “data broker loophole” that allows government agencies to sidestep the Fourth Amendment by buying Americans’ search histories, geolocation histories, and communications from shady, third-party data brokers.
 
·      One more obvious reform is the one already promised: The House must address the “Make Everyone a Spy” provision before reauthorizing Section 702.
 
It is unconscionable that the NSA can conscript vast swaths of American businesses and non-profit organizations that provide ordinary services, such as Wi-Fi, into a domestic spying operation on customers, tenants, and congregants.
 
This ability of the government to spy on media, law firms, political organizations, and religious groups trashes both the First and Fourth Amendments. This is more than a failure in legislative oversight. It is a breach of trust.
 
Just as bad, when combined with other unresolved problems, such as Section 702’s warrantless “backdoor searches,” and the government’s purchase of sensitive personal data by a dozen government agencies, Congress has set the stage for a genuine American surveillance state.
 
Fortunately, the House has no lack of solutions. Bipartisan proposals – from Rep. Andy Biggs’s Protect Liberty and End Warrantless Surveillance Act to the Government Surveillance Reform Act, sponsored by Rep. Warren Davidson and Rep. Zoe Lofgren – contain language that would narrow the ECSP definition.
 
Since Senate leaders did not deliver the ECSP fix earlier in their own chamber, the responsibility now falls squarely on the House. Leadership should not move forward with any intelligence package that ignores this commitment or relies on vague assurances that reforms will come “later,” behind closed doors.
 
Anything less would confirm the worst suspicions of the American people – that when it comes to surveillance, a promised reform is always just one vote away, one that never quite arrives.
 
Click here to tell House Speaker Mike Johnson to drop any attempt at a clean reauthorization of FISA Section 702 that rejects reasonable domestic surveillance reforms.

DONATE & HELP US DEFEND YOUR FOURTH AMENDMENT RIGHTS