US Senate to vote on wiretapping bill that critics say is Stasi-like

The U.S. Senate is set to vote this week on legislation that, for at least the next two years, could dramatically expand the number of companies the U.S. government can force to listen to Americans without a warrant.

Some of the nation's top legal experts handling a controversial U.S. spying program say the legislation, known as the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act (RISAA), would strengthen the U.S. government's spying powers, forcing various new companies to secretly listen to the Americans. calls, SMS and emails abroad.

Among these experts are a handful of lawyers who had the rare opportunity to appear before the secretive US government surveillance court.

The Section 702 program, authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, was created more than a decade ago to legalize the government practice of forcing large telecommunications companies to listen in on foreign calls to following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

On the one hand, the government claims that the program is designed to exclusively target foreign citizens physically located abroad; on the other, the government has fiercely defended its ability to access wiretaps of Americans' emails and telephone conversations, often years after the fact and in cases unrelated to the reasons why the wiretaps were ordered in first place.

The 702 program works by mandating the cooperation of U.S. companies defined by the government as electronic communications service providers, traditionally telephone and e-mail providers such as AT&T and Google. Members of the House Intelligence Committee, whose leaders today serve largely as lobbyists for the U.S. intelligence community in Congress, have worked to expand the definition of that term, allowing the government to force new categories of companies to listen at the government gates.

Marc Zwillinger, a private attorney who has appeared twice before the FISA Court of Review, wrote last week that the RISAA legislation expands the definition of electronic communications service provider (ECSR) to include data centers and commercial business owners, he says, who simply have access. to communication equipment in their physical space. According to Zwillinger, RISAA can also entrap anyone with access to such facilities and equipment, including delivery personnel, cleaning contractors and utility providers.

Zwillinger had previously criticized CEDS language this year, leading House lawmakers to amend the text to explicitly exclude certain types of businesses, including hotels.

Zwillinger responded that the need for these exclusions is sufficient evidence that the text is too broad; an exception which simply serves to prove that the rule exists: the breadth of the new definition is evident in the fact that the drafters felt obliged to exclude such ordinary places as senior centers, hotels and cafes , he writes. But for these specific exceptions, the scope of the new definition would cover them and many companies that did not benefit from a specific exemption would remain under its jurisdiction.

That analysis quickly flooded Capitol Hill inboxes last week, with some Hill staffers and privacy experts quietly calling the CESR language a Stasi amendment, a reference to police East German secret service known for infiltrating industry and forcing German citizens to spy on each other.

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