WASHINGTON — Sen. Al Franken is working on a bill that he says would bring more transparency to the way federal government surveillance programs collect Americans’ information.
After the Guardian reported on the government’s mass collection of American cell phone ‘metadata’ last month, Franken said he planned to seek more information about how the program works, and that it might be a topic of interest for the Privacy, Technology and the Law Subcommittee he chairs. Now, in an op-ed on CNN, Franken said he’ll soon introduce a bill that would force the government to disclose how much private information it collects.
I'm working on legislation that will require the federal government to annually report how it uses key authorities under the Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, including the authorities underlying the phone metadata and the PRISM electronic surveillance programs that recently came to light. For each of these authorities, the government must disclose how many Americans' information is being collected and how many Americans' information is being queried and actually seen by federal officers or agents.
My legislation would also allow companies to publicly report on how many Patriot and FISA orders they're getting and how many of their customers these orders affect. There's a way to do this that protects national security. Since 2009, Google has been reporting on the number of national security letters it receives, and that hasn't hurt anyone. I frankly think that after Snowden's disclosures, an even stronger case can be made that we can achieve greater transparency without harming national security. …
In 2013, we're long overdue for another public conversation about what constitutes a reasonable expectation of privacy. It's hard to have that debate around secret programs authorized by secret legal opinions issued by a secret court. Actually, it's impossible to have that debate.
Since news about the government’s surveillance program broke, officials have begun to acknowledge that the program exists, even going public with the program’s renewal by court order last Friday. But lawmakers in both parties have defended the program as good for public safety.
The House could vote on an amendment to a defense spending bill Wednesday that would strip the National Security Agency of the power to collect data under the Patriot Act. Republican leaders and the White House have opposed the measure.
Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com