To close this loophole and make sure that Americans are protected from illegal search and seizure of their smartphone location data, Senator Ron Wyden is planning a renewed push for his The Fourth Amendment is not for Sale Act .

In a memo sent to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and obtained by The New York Times, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) admitted that it buys location data from brokers — and that the data isn’t separated by whether a person lives in the US or outside of it.

Now, thanks to a written inquiry by Senator Ron Wyden, we now know that the Patriot Act has been used for internet surveillance, as well.France rocked again by demonstrations against the new “Global Security Law”, which includes mass surveillance by police drones.

Letters between the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and Senator Ron Wyden confirm that the United States government has used Section 215 of the Patriot Act to collect web browsing information via a FISA court order.

Motherboard has seen the contract between Venntel and the IRS that confirms how the IRS was spying on American citizens.Now, Senator Wyden has unveiled plans to introduce legislation that will stop the IRS from buying location data from third party companies like Venntel.

The IRS revealed to Senator Wyden’s office in June that the tax agency had bought a set of location data from a data broker known as Venntel.

Called Total Information Awareness (TIA), it was the “biggest surveillance program in the history of the United States,” said Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), whose Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had nominal oversight.

Sen. Ron Wyden said he will introduce a new privacy bill that would ban government agencies from buying people's personal information from data brokers to skirt standard court orders.

After hackers managed to take over a wave of high profile accounts on Twitter by leveraging access to an internal tool, Senator Ron Wyden is highlighting that the social network has not implemented end-to-encryption for direct messages, even though the company previously explored the idea.

Not only would this prevent the House of Representatives from voting on the popular Wyden-Daines amendment which would force the government to obtain a warrant before spying on people’s Internet activity, but it would also prevent the House from ratifying the Lee-Leahy amendment which has been passed by the Senate to protect journalists, political candidates, and religious groups from government surveillance.

Greer says Wyden's introduction of the amendment could be a way of alerting the public that intelligence agencies have already been collecting U.S. citizens' web search data.

A spokesperson for Sen. Ron Wyden, an intelligence committee member and a sponsor of the pro-privacy amendment the talking points seek to undermine, said that if an individual is a known spy, “then obviously there’s probable cause that he is an agent of a foreign power and a warrant is readily available.”.

Lofgren and Davidson advocated for their amendment in a letter Wednesday to the House Rules Committee, noting that the Wyden-Daines proposal had a bipartisan majority of the Senate and that at least two senators indicated they would have voted for it had they been present.The House is expected to pass the surveillance measure next week.

An order in which an IP address used by multiple people is the target An order collecting all the people who visit a particular website An order collecting all the web browsing and internet searches of a single user The government is required to report:.

– U.S. Senators Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Mike Rounds, R-S.D., with Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., led 20 members of the House and Senate in a request to encrypt phone calls between the chambers to protect communications against foreign surveillance.

The bi-partisan push to install the privacy protection mechanism was led by Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Steve Daines (R-MT), and came following the news a planned addition to the PATRIOT Act, which is due to be renewed this week, would allow law enforcement to collect people’s browsing histories without a warrant.

"Government hacking is among the most invasive forms of surveillance—tracking someone’s movements, turning on their webcam and microphone, or accessing photos and other sensitive data on a phone or computer," Senator Wyden told Motherboard in a statement.

A bipartisan Senate trio is asking credit agencies Equifax, Experian and TransUnion to disclose more information about how the companies work with the FBI to spy on American consumers.

Three lawmakers — Democratic senators Ron Wyden and Elizabeth Warren, and Republican senator Rand Paul — have sent letters to Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, expressing their “alarm” as to why the credit giants have failed to disclose the number of government demands for consumer data they receive.

As Mark Zuckerberg testified about all things Facebook on the House side of the Capitol last week, over on the Senate side some lawmakers were debating whether CEOs like Zuckerberg should face jail time if their companies misuse people’s personal data.“You know, my sense is that Mark Zuckerberg is not going to take American’s privacy seriously unless he and others in these positions face personal consequences,” senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) told WIRED in his Capitol Hill office.

Book ‘Em. On Thursday, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden unveiled the official version of a privacy bill designed to protect Americans’ data and punish anyone who deceptively exploits it — even the CEOs of massive tech corporations.

Wyden was talking to the Willamette Week about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 law that gives online platforms like Facebook broad immunity for content posted by their users.

U.S Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), in an interview with Willamette Week, suggested that Mark Zuckerberg should face a prison term for lying to American citizens about Facebook's privacy lapses."Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly lied to the American people about privacy," Senator Wyden said in the interview.

"I write to ask that you protect your customers’ privacy—and U.S. national security—from foreign hackers and spies by limiting the time you keep records about your customers’ communications, web browsing, app usage and movements," Wyden's letter addressed to the CEOs of each teleco reads.

Senator Paul and I are introducing this bill to start taking back Americans' Constitutional protections," Sen. Wyden said. Our bill will put an end to these intrusive government searches and uphold the fundamental protections of the Fourth Amendment," Sen. Paul said.

In a letter signed by Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, and Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, the senators ask Senate Sergeant at Arms Michael Stenger to provide an annual report on the number of times Senate computers have been hacked, and incidents where hackers were able to access sensitive Senate data.

I will not stop pushing Congress and intelligence leaders to be straight with the American people and end unnecessary surveillance that violates our constitutional freedoms without keeping us any safer.” Last year, Wyden and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., asked the NSA Inspector General to investigate the NSA’s overcollection of phone records.

“Providing more authority and resources to the US Federal Trade Commission is a critical foundation for robust privacy protection.” The bill’s eye-popping penalties are reserved for large companies and wouldn’t apply to privacy violations themselves.

"Nonetheless, we are reviewing these issues carefully to ensure the proper handling of all AT&T customer information." And T-Mobile US's Legere told Senator Wyden to his face that he would end the practice of selling location data through third parties.

“Clearly the current status quo isn’t working—the Federal Trade Commission needs real powers with strong teeth in order to punish companies that lose or misuse Americans’ private information,” said Wyden, adding: “Until companies like Marriott feel the threat of multi-billion dollar fines, and jail-time for their senior executives, these companies won’t take privacy seriously.”