Civil Liberties, Privacy Shield Harmed by Senate Bill Limiting PCLOB Scope, Warns Coalition

said it would harm human rights and trans-Atlantic trade. The coalition sent a letter Friday to senators, urging them to oppose the Intelligence Authorization Act for FY 2017 (S-3017) that limits the scope of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C. introduced the bill June 6 and has no co-sponsors. In its letter, the coalition said PCLOB planned to address the impact of electronic surveillance directed largely outside the U.S. in its next report, but that Section 603 of the bill would prohibit the board from doing that. "The President recognized the important role that the PCLOB can and should play to protect the rights of people outside the United States in the surveillance context," wrote the coalition, which includes Apple, the Center for Democracy & Technology, Google, Microsoft, New America's Open Technology Institute and Georgia Institute of Technology professor Peter Swire, who was a privacy czar during the Clinton administration. They said PCLOB would be prevented from investigating potential violations of the Fourth Amendment rights of non-U.S. persons living in the U.S. Plus, they said limiting the board's authority would "undermine" the proposed EU-U.S. Privacy Shield. "Regardless of one's view of the sufficiency of the Privacy Shield, the agreement was the product of extensive, delicate negotiations" that, in part, relies on PCLOB oversight of U.S. surveillance on non-U.S. persons, the letter said: The Senate bill would "damage the ongoing diplomatic discussions with the EU by barring PCLOB from exercising oversight of the data of Europeans and other non-U.S. persons."