Press freedom group asks US lawmakers for transparency over alleged VPN surveillance

• Press freedom group calls for transparency on how authorities monitor VPN
• It follows warning Americans using a VPN may be treated as foreign targets
• Advocates urge Congress to pass the Government Surveillance Reform Act

The push for answers regarding warrantless government surveillance of virtual private networks (VPNs) is gaining crucial momentum. Press freedom advocates are now publicly demanding transparency from US lawmakers over how intelligence agencies monitor the traffic of citizens trying to protect their digital privacy.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) has stepped into the fray, warning that millions of Americans, as well as journalists relying on the best VPN to protect sources and bypass censorship, could be inadvertently swept up in foreign spying operations.

The urgent call to action follows recent revelations that the US intelligence community may be targeting citizens who use commercial privacy tools. In March, six Democratic lawmakers wrote to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, questioning whether the use of a VPN strips Americans of their constitutional privacy protections.

Under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and Executive Order 12333, intelligence agencies have sweeping authority to monitor foreign communications without a warrant.

However, because a VPN routes traffic to a remote location before connecting to the web, a user's true location is hidden. As the lawmakers’ letter highlighted, the government takes the position that data of unknown origin should be treated as foreign and is therefore "subject to few privacy protections".

A threat to press freedom

For the FPF, this default assumption that unknown traffic belongs to a non-US person is a massive red flag. By treating all VPN users as "foreign," the government could be exposing Americans to unchecked monitoring.

"Journalists use virtual private networks every day to bypass censorship, to protect their location information, and to defend their traffic against network eavesdropping," noted FPF's Deputy Director of Digital Security, Dr. Martin Shelton, and FPF's Senior Adviser and Advocacy, Caitlin Vogus, in a blog post.

"And not just journalists, VPNs are privacy tools used by millions of Americans," they added.

Because VPN providers typically mix the data of hundreds or thousands of users on a single server, intelligence officials could potentially monitor web traffic to trace connections, sending legal requests to web service providers to learn more about the users connecting from a given IP address.

The FPF also highlighted a growing, futuristic threat to digital privacy. While premium VPNs provide a robust layer of encryption that secures web traffic from internet service providers, intelligence agencies are reportedly still collecting large swaths of encrypted data.

The foundation warned that this data could be stockpiled for "harvest now, decrypt later" attacks. In this scenario, attackers copy encrypted traffic today with the hope of reading it tomorrow using exponentially more powerful quantum computers.

According to the FPF, Google security researchers have warned that the industry should prepare for this potential risk "as soon as 2029".

Calls for surveillance reform

To prevent intelligence agencies from exploiting foreign surveillance powers, the FPF is urging Congress to implement strict safeguards before deciding whether to reauthorize Section 702 of FISA.

Chief among their demands is the closure of the "backdoor search loophole," which would force the government to obtain a legal warrant before searching the communications of Americans collected under Section 702.

The Foundation is also calling for an end to the "data broker loophole," which currently allows federal agencies to purchase sensitive data about citizens that would normally require a warrant to access.

Advocates argue that passing the proposed Government Surveillance Reform Act would solidify these crucial changes. Until then, the FPF says the public deserves clarity: "It's therefore crucial that the American public has answers about how our intelligence community monitors our VPN traffic".

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