Warnings grow in Congress about expanded US eavesdropping powers

“Commercial owners of buildings where tens of millions of Americans go to work every day could have to help the government monitor,” she said. She noted that unlike Verizon or Google, these entities often lack the ability to isolate individual messages, meaning they may have to give NSA employees “direct access to their communications equipment and all communications operating through that equipment, including purely local communications.”

James Czerniawski, a senior policy analyst at the free-market think tank the Center for Consumer Choice, called the expansion “very expansive” and said it “brought a whole bunch of companies into this surveillance apparatus that had no intention of ever being there.” He noted that the Information Technology Industry Council, a major technology trade association, took the unusual step of publicly urging Congress to narrow the definition.

The committee also aired what became known as the “data broker loophole” — the ability of agencies to purchase location, browsing and other sensitive data about Americans from private companies rather than obtaining it through a court order.

“This happens all the time,” Gutin said, listing the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Secret Service, Homeland Security, Department of Defense and IRS among the agencies that have purchased cell phone location data. She noted that the Supreme Court has ruled that historical location information for cell sites is protected under the Fourth Amendment when asked for directly, but the agencies claim they can buy the same data from intermediaries without a warrant.

The secrecy surrounding those contracts and purchases makes it difficult for Congress or the courts to impose any limits, Tolman said.

“Without the ability to highlight what they do and who they contract with, it is very difficult to stop using it,” he said, calling for external auditors and stricter guardrails on data purchasing.

Cherniawski added that such reforms “will not end surveillance, nor will they prevent legitimate national security operations,” considering that “the country will not be wronged.”