Coalition Wants Open Hearings on Proposal Expanding FBI Access to Internet Data

Thirty civil liberties, technology and government watchdog groups are urging Senate leaders to hold public hearings on a proposal that would give the FBI wider access to Americans' internet browsing history and other metadata without a court warrant. "The proposal, if enacted, would remove necessary judicial oversight of the FBI's access to these personal records and would threaten individuals' privacy," wrote the coalition in a Monday letter to Sen. Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C. At issue is expansion of national security letters (NSLs), which are like administrative subpoenas, that the coalition says would permit "the FBI to unilaterally issue demands" for sensitive data like "logs of who individuals communicated with online via email, chat, video, and text; what services they subscribe to; what times they sign into and out of their accounts; IP addresses; and much more." Such data are called electronic communications transactional records (ECTR). The groups said the NSL statute "has been the subject of significant abuse" because there's no check against it. Last month, the Senate failed to end debate on the amendment to the Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations bill (see 1606220075). Before then, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, introduced an ECTR amendment to legislation updating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act that forced that bill's sponsors to withdraw it, likely jeopardizing its passage this session (see 1606090007). The coalition -- including Access Now, the American Civil Liberties Union, Computer & Communications Industry Association, New America's Open Technology Institute and TechFreedom -- said senators should have the opportunity in a public setting to probe the FBI's current needs and challenges raised by this proposal as well as understand its impact, before voting on the amendment again.