Surveillance expansion threatens press freedom – and everyone else's
Image created using Midjourney, CC BY-NC
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.
Take Action
Tell Congress to Fix Section 702 of FISA.
-
Call or Email Your Senator or Representative
-
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.
- Learn More
-
-
Write to Your Local Paper
-
Help advance press freedom by writing newspaper op-eds or letters to the editor in support of fixing Section 702 of FISA.
- Learn More
-
Featured Items
-
PayPal and Venmo enforcement procedures threaten First Amendment protected speech
PayPal and its subsidiary Venmo must bring more transparency and accountability to its practices around account freezes and closures, argues a new letter signed by Freedom of the Press Foundation and nearly two dozen human rights and civil liberties groups.
-
In a sea change for press freedom, Biden administration vows not to spy on reporters doing their job
The Biden admin, following the revelation of several scandals involving the DOJ spying on journalists, says it will end the practice.
-
Surveillance of CNN reporter underscores urgency of Justice Department ban on journalist spying
The Trump administration's Department of Justice secretly obtained the phone and email records of a CNN journalist last year. Senator Wyden has called on the Biden admin to categorically bar the surveillance of journalists in order to root out their sources.
-
Intimidation tactic: Police photograph faces, press passes of journalists covering protests
Law enforcement officers have photographed the faces or IDs of nearly three dozen journalists in Oregon and Minnesota in recent months, according to new data published by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. These measures don’t appear to serve any law enforcement purpose beyond intimidating reporters who are doing their job.
-
Biden administration defends Trump’s indefensible surveillance of reporters
Department of Justice subpoenas for the phone records of three Washington Post reporters represent an outrageous invasion of the First Amendment rights of journalists to communicate with sources, and the defense of their use by the Biden administration raises alarming questions about its commitment to press freedom.
-
Lawmakers can support journalists, but only by actually listening to them first
In the past two months, lawmakers in Florida and New Jersey have advanced misguided proposals that would effectively classify assaults on journalists as hate crimes. These proposals would do little to fix the underlying issues and would likely create a host of new problems.
-
When algorithms come for journalists
Journalists — especially those without institutional newsroom support — rely on tools from major tech companies like Google and YouTube for newsgathering, production and distribution as a matter of course. As these information giants publicly wrestle with controversial content moderation decisions that dominate headlines and Congressional hearings, their decisions also run the risk of stifling routine reporting.
-
Here’s how we impacted press freedom in 2020, a harrowing year for journalists
Freedom of the Press Foundation releases its 2020 Impact Report, outlining the work we’ve accomplished in the past year, an overview of our major projects and initiatives, and how we will be expanding on our work in 2021.
-
The Biden admin’s press freedom record should be judged on actions, not just rhetoric
Talking about the importance of press freedom is nice, actually protecting it is much better.
-
Music industry forces widely used journalist tool offline
The popular free software project “youtube-dl” was removed from Github on Friday following a legal notice from the Recording Industry Association of America claiming it violates copyright law. The tool is widely used by journalists for various reporting purposes.
