World Theory: The Tenth Anniversary of the Prism Gate: The US National Security Agency's Privacy Infringement Behavior Has No Convergence

China Daily, June 6 / PRNewswire-Asianet /-- Ten years ago, Edward Snowden, a former US defense contractor, worked with some of the world's top news organizations to disclose the "Prism Project" carried out by the US National Security Agency in monitoring around the world. it confirms the key facts that the United States steals people's online communications, Internet activities and phone records at home and abroad.

As early as 2013, groups such as the Privacy Advocacy Organization Electronic Frontier Foundation had been fighting to uncover and prevent large-scale hazard monitoring by US national security agencies. But Snowden's disclosure is like a lamp, allowing everyone to better see and understand what is happening in the black box where the US government monitors millions of innocent people in the country and around the world.

Article 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows the US government to monitor within its borders through the absorption of digital communications, but the target of surveillance can only be foreign nationals currently located outside the United States, and intentional targeting of Americans is prohibited. However, the US National Security Agency often "accidentally" obtains data from US citizens without justifiable reasons. Once collected, the Federal Bureau of Investigation can search this vast information database by "querying" the communication of specific individuals.

In 2021 alone, the Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted up to 3.4 million unlicensed searches using Section 702 to monitor communication among US citizens. Although Congress and foreign intelligence surveillance courts have imposed some restrictions on these "backdoor searches," according to recent opinions from foreign intelligence surveillance courts, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has even engaged in "widespread violations" of minimum privacy protection.

According to Snowden's disclosure, the two key surveillance programs conducted by the US National Security Agency under Section 702 are the Prism Program and the Upstream Program, respectively. The latter is the core of the lawsuit of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and there was direct evidence about it even before its name became well-known.

Since the initial adoption of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978, private parties have the right to sue for violations of their rights in national security surveillance, including through a mechanism for courts to consider confidential evidence while maintaining national security. But in repeated lawsuits, the US executive branch has attempted to avoid these procedures, while the judiciary, including the Supreme Court, has interpreted the law narrowly and created constitutional exceptions on national security issues.

The result is that even if monitoring projects such as the Upstream Plan are widely known, courts often refuse to determine that the injured individual is qualified to sue. The landmark lawsuit of EFF, Jewel v. NSA, was in this situation, and the US Supreme Court rejected the case because the lower court deemed it to involve "confidentiality.". At least since the disclosure of Snowden documents in 2013, everyone knows that large-scale espionage projects involve the two largest telecommunications operators in the United States, but this is considered "confidential".

The American people need Congress to explain the purpose of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to address the chaotic situation. That is to say, confidentiality should not be an obstacle to prosecuting whether large-scale surveillance is constitutional, and courts should not fabricate new reasons to avoid these issues.

Most of the espionage activities conducted by the National Security Agency outside the United States are carried out with the support of Executive Order 12333, which directly affects everyone around the world, including US citizens. The agency analyzes people's communication and other data through a tool called XKEYSCORE. As reported by the Guardian in 2013 according to Snowden's disclosure, this tool enables analysts to observe any behavior of a person on the Internet in real time.

Despite continuous calls for reform, the results have been minimal, with almost no reduction in large-scale monitoring, including the use of XKEYSCORE and other methods. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Committee is a government agency aimed at providing advice to the US executive on privacy and civil liberties issues. The agency delayed for a long time before releasing a disappointing report. People still need to engage in serious dialogue, not only about the National Security Agency's espionage activities in the United States, but also about its larger privacy collection and analysis worldwide, as well as the lack of supervision.

Despite continuous calls for federal legislation to restrict large technology companies in the past few years, there has been no significant progress in limiting their ability to collect data, regulating biometric surveillance, or closing backdoors that allow the government to purchase personal information instead of obtaining authorization, let alone establishing a new Church Committee to investigate excessive behavior in the intelligence community.

It has been 10 years since the Snowden incident, and the US Congress needs to be more vigilant and pass legislation to effectively protect people's privacy from direct infringement by businesses and the US National Security Agency.

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