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.
Featured Items
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There’s no right time for Apple’s privacy-invading tech features
Apple announced Friday that it would postpone its planned roll-out of user device surveillance technology that had come under heavy fire from the privacy and civil liberties community. It should drop the plans entirely.
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Apple’s device surveillance plan is a threat to user privacy — and press freedom
The backlash from privacy and human rights advocates to Apple's new plan this month for scanning photos on user devices to detect known child sexual abuse images has been loud and nearly unanimous. The tech raises press freedom problems, too.
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Congress must pass the Justice Dept’s new media surveillance rules into law
New rules prohibiting the surveillance of journalists are the strongest in the modern history of the Department of Justice — and that’s a big victory for press freedom. But it’s important to note that this new policy could be undone by a future Department of Justice memo.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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