Internet

摘要

The National Security Agency's Prism program, which monitors Web traffic for potential terroristnactivities, "is not a civil liberties issue — it's a business issue for American companies," said formernGoogle head of U.S. public policy Alan Davidson. "The rules that we have in place are protective enoughnof privacy," he said during a Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee event Friday. But "ifnpeople don't trust these services they are not going to use them," said Davidson, now a visiting scholar atnMIT's technology and policy program. Davidson said "the low hanging fruit for Congress is more transparencynabout the number of the orders." Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel at the American CivilnLiberties Union, said Congress should amend Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which permits the governmentnto get court orders to collect "tangible things" when the FBI certifies they're relevant to a governmentninvestigation. "We are of course very disappointed that these tools are being used for surveillancenon everyday Americans," she said. Judicial oversight of the programs is not adequate, said Richardson:n"This is an area of law that has not been litigated in pubic courts. We really don't know what they are doing."nThis month the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the government that alleged the NSA program violatesnthe First Amendment rights of free speech and association as well as the right of privacy protected by thenFourth Amendment. The scale of the government's surveillance of millions of Americans "makes anynmeaningful oversight more of a chimera," said Julian Sanchez, a research fellow at the Cato Institute.