Multiple covert government surveillance operations hoovering up Americans’ information without oversight have been exposed in the last year. Those not following closely may not have noticed.
Recent revelations about government spying have failed to make a major splash in Congress, the media or public discourse.
Stories about surveillance have broken through before — perhaps most notably in the case of Edward Snowden’s disclosures about the National Security Agency but also in the 1970s when the Senate’s Church Committee investigated abuses by multiple intelligence agencies.
What made those cases so much more salient? And how can privacy advocates get the public’s attention more consistently?
Over the past several months, lawmakers and reporters have revealed that the country’s intelligence agencies have been using broad executive authority and taking advantage of a loophole in the Fourth Amendment to obtain much more data than was previously known.
Three of these major discoveries, all made public by Sen. Ron Wyden’s (D-Ore.) office, concern the CIA gathering American data, a defense agency buying consumer data from a third-party broker and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) participating in a program stealthily compiling money transfer records.
There are some major differences between these revelations and ones that have attracted public attention in the past.