This story was co-published with

Truthout

.

Congress is grappling with the renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the controversial program that allows the U.S. government to surveil foreigners and the individuals that correspond with them, including Americans. Its proponents say it’s vital to national security, but civil liberties advocates say it’s unconstitutional.

Section 702 expired on June 12 because lawmakers could not agree on terms for a renewal and, without a permanent director of national intelligence following Tulsi Gabbard’s resignation (until prosecutor Jay Clayton’s

recent confirmation

for the role), talks about resuming the program — with reforms or otherwise — have stalled.

Section 702, which is considered a counterterrorism mechanism, grants government officials authorization to track foreigners abroad to obtain “intelligence information” in the interest of national security. But when tracking what it deems “intelligence information” about a foreigner, the government also collects ordinary information that has absolutely nothing to do with counterterrorism or security.

Day-to-day communications from law-abiding U.S. citizens get

caught up

in this web of surveillance without their knowledge or consent, and without a warrant. This information is stored in government databases for years, if not indefinitely. Officials at the NSA, CIA, FBI, and other agencies can review this information for a wide variety of reasons, including criminal prosecution and immigration enforcement.

At a time when the Trump administration seeks to expand the definition of terrorism to encompass a wide range of dissenting views, Americans’ fears of abuse of government

surveillance

of their

communications

are more

justified

than ever; 15 activists in Minneapolis were recently indicted based largely on

Signal chats

, for example.

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Regardless of what happens with Section 702, the government is still spying on millions of U.S. citizens daily through its system of mass incarceration. These abuses — also conducted using security concerns as pretext — deserve every bit as much scrutiny as the government’s overreach under Section 702. Unseen surveillance has already eroded the privacy rights of millions of incarcerated individuals and those on the outside who communicate with them.

Surveillance of Prison Communication

The U.S. is the world’s leader in incarceration. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, there are nearly 2 million people held in the nation’s jails, prisons, and detention centers. Securus and ViaPath are the country’s largest prison and jail telecom corporations. Collectively, they dominate about

80 percent

of the U.S. telecom market.

Just as “foreign intelligence information” is defined broadly under FISA Section 702, “security” is loosely interpreted by Securus and ViaPath.

In addition to its contracts with the federal government, this duopoly has agreements with at least 43 different states and over 800 county jails. They

facilitate

hundreds of millions of calls and electronic messages between incarcerated individuals, their legal teams, and loved ones.

Under the guise of security, anyone who utilizes their services is given advance warning that their phone calls could be recorded. What happens to those recordings outside their stated security purposes is largely unknown. Calls between incarcerated individuals and their legal representation are supposedly exempt from this policy. As an incarcerated journalist, all my reporting is surveilled in some way or another.

Just as “foreign intelligence information” is defined broadly under FISA Section 702, “security” is loosely interpreted by Securus and ViaPath. Actions by both telecom corporations reveal “security” to mean anything that advances their profit margins or the U.S.’s expanding police state.

Back in 2018, a

New York Times