Surveillance expansion threatens press freedom – and everyone else's

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Mass surveillance is widespread. Congress must rein in government spying powers.
In 2013, whistleblower and longtime Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) board member Edward Snowden’s stunning revelations of mass surveillance by the National Security Agency shocked the world. Since then, we’ve learned even more about the alarming scope of surveillance by the U.S. government.
Mass surveillance undermines everyone’s privacy, and it threatens press freedom by allowing the government to spy on communications between journalists and their sources.
Tell Congress to Fix Section 702 of FISA.
Call or email your senator or representative and urge them to fix Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. A recent change to the law has vastly expanded the government’s spying powers.
Help advance press freedom by writing newspaper op-eds or letters to the editor in support of fixing Section 702 of FISA.
In an important announcement, the New Yorker has launched ‘Strongbox,’ a whistleblower submission system that aims to allow for anonymous leakers to digitally hand off important information to journalists. The underlying code, called 'Dead-Drop,' is an open-source project and was written by Internet pioneer and legendary coder Aaron Swartz, before …
As part of a new leak investigation, the Justice Department has secretly obtained the call records for twenty phone lines owned by the Assocated Press (AP), which could put sources for as many as one hundred reporters at risk. The AP called the move a "massive and unprecedented intrusion," saying …
As newsroom budgets shrink around the country, one of the casualties has been challenges to Freedom of Information Act violations or other open-records laws through litigation. One recent study shows major news organizations are challenging government secrecy orders in court much less frequently in the last few years. Despite these …
Jason Leopold is Truthout’s lead investigative reporter. Freedom of the Press Foundation is crowd-funding in support of his FOIA work and on-the-scenes reporting at the Guantanamo Bay trials. You can fund his work here. A couple of years ago, a friend handed me about 500 pages of documents he …
In the wake of the government's secret legal rationale for the targeted killing of American citizens leaking to the press, President Obama has now twice vowed to bring more transparency to national security issues, and in particular, drone strikes. Yet since his two statements, his administration has instead moved to …
This week, Congress finally started a substantive debate on the role of drones in US foreign policy, and more importantly, the Obama administration’s secret legal rationale for why it believes it can kill American citizens overseas with no due process. But why is this just happening now? It's been more …
A disturbing report in Saturday’s Washington Post describes an FBI investigation of a large number of government officials suspected of leaking classified information to the press, engulfing an unknown group of reporters along the way. The investigation includes data-mining officials’ personal and professional communications to find any contact with journalists. …