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 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.
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.
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.
Talking about the importance of press freedom is nice, actually protecting it is much better.
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.
A disturbing federal assault on journalists is unfolding in Portland.
The full Senate is expected to vote on the controversial EARN IT Act in the coming days, after unanimous approval from the Judiciary Committee on July 2. EARN IT would open the door to criminalizing encryption protections and increase censorship online, posing a significant threat to press freedom and whistleblowers.
Freedom of the Press Foundation believes Black lives matter, and we support the efforts of activists and protesters exercising their First Amendment rights to take a stand against police brutality.
Despite online privacy concerns at an all-time high, the Senate rejected a critical reform to the Patriot Act yesterday, voting to hand the Trump administration and Attorney General William Barr the ability to spy on Americans’ web browsing habits without a warrant.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to upend daily life, President Donald Trump accelerated smearing the press on Twitter, reaching 2,000 negative tweets about the media in a string of insults and accusations on April 11, 2020.According to our analysis of more than 19,400 of Trump’s tweets, 2,000 means that …