Mother Jones
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Not a month goes by without former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden dropping another explosive bombshell about the US government’s vast surveillance programs. In response, lawmakers have proposed a flurry of bills that aim to clamp down on NSA spying. But tech companies aren’t just sitting on the sidelines—the latest lobbying disclosure forms filed by Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and Twitter reveal that their lobbyists are keeping an eye on a number of these anti-NSA bills. And although most of the companies won’t say which specific bills they support or oppose, some new bills have popped up on their lobbying forms just as the companies are publicly demanding surveillance reform.
The lobbying disclosure forms cover the period from July 1 to September 30, the months immediately following the first Snowden disclosure about the PRISM program in June. Bills introduced after those dates, such as the tech industry-backed USA Freedom Act proposed by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), aren’t included. There are also some bills that were introduced pre-Snowden.
In total, during this period, Facebook spent $1.44 million on lobbying, Yahoo spent $630,000, Google spent $3.37 million, and Twitter spent $40,000. The forms don’t break down whether a company poured thousands of dollars into lobbying for one bill, or had one brief conversation about it with a lawmaker or an aide. Nor do the forms reveal whether companies have lobbied for or against a given bill. And for now, most US tech companies are keeping their positions about specific bills secret, so they can present a unified front against NSA spying and keep their options open.
Representatives of the most important tech companies have, however, made public statements indicating that they’re likely to support bills that allow them to shed more light on government surveillance. “I was shocked that the NSA would do this—perhaps a violation of law but certainly a violation of mission,” Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt told CNN last week, in response to an October 30 Washington Post report that the NSA was tapping into Google’s servers without the company’s consent. “From a Google perspective, any internal use of Google services is unauthorized and almost certainly illegal.” Niki Fenwick, a spokesperson for Google, said that the company doesn’t comment on whether it supports specific bills, but Bloomberg News reported last week that the company, which has bulked up its lobbying presence on Capitol Hill, “seeks to end National Security Agency intrusions into its data.”
“Defending and respecting the user’s voice is a natural commitment for us and is why we are so committed to freedom of expression,” Colin Crowell, Twitter’s vice president for global public policy, tells Mother Jones. A Twitter representative noted that the company is actively supporting two of the bills below, S. 607 and HR 1852, which require law enforcement to obtain a warrant before accessing private emails. “For the others, at any given moment, bills are in a state of change so it is rare to emphatically state that we formally support or oppose any given bill until it is nearer a point of final passage,” the representative added.
Without further ado, here are eight pro-transparency bills that some of the biggest names in tech are watching:
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Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and Twitter Have a New Lobbying Target—the NSA
