U.S. SENATE – U.S. Senator Steve Daines helped introduce the “Government Surveillance Reform Act” to establish new safeguards for government surveillance and accountability for abuse, reauthorize and reform FISA section 702, and establish protections for Montanans whose private information is collected under other intelligence authorities.
“Americans have a constitutional right to be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures that is nonnegotiable,” said Daines. “As the federal government is increasingly sticking it’s nose into Americans’ private conversations and records, we must put an end to illegitimate searches and protect this fundamental right.”
The bill’s reforms include:
- Protecting Americans from warrantless backdoor searches, ensuring that foreigners aren’t targeted as a pretext for spying on the Americans with whom they are communicating, and prohibiting the collection of domestic communications.
- Extending similar reforms to surveillance activities under Executive Order 12333, including by limiting warrantless searches of Americans’ communications and prohibiting the targeting of foreigners as a pretext for surveilling Americans. It also limits the acquisition of Americans’ information as part of large datasets.
- Requiring warrants for surveillance of Americans’ location data, web browsing and search records, including AI assistants like Alexa and Siri, vehicle data and by prohibiting the government from purchasing Americans’ data from data brokers.
- Exceptions to ensure the government can continue to use Section 702 for defensive cybersecurity purposes, to assist in locating and rescuing hostages overseas and emergency provisions in cases where there isn’t sufficient time to get a warrant in advance.
A one-page summary of the bill is HERE.
A section-by-section summary of the bill is HERE.
Read the full bill HERE.