Section 702 of FISA Discussion | Hide & Speak Livestream - 4/18 @ 4pm ET

Our Take

Credit to the Hide & Speak crew at Verified Privacy VPN (vp.net) for ditching the script and just letting the community talk about Section 702 of FISA. That law lets federal agencies sweep up communications under the banner of foreign intelligence, and it's been a recurring flashpoint for anyone who cares about digital sovereignty. An open-mic format means we don't know exactly what gets said in the room, so we won't pretend to summarize a transcript we don't have — but the framing alone, "the digital iron curtain falls," says a lot about where privacy advocates think things are headed.

What we'd add from our corner of the surveillance fight: 702 debates tend to stay fixated on NSA data centers and tech-company backdoors, while a parallel surveillance apparatus has been built at the local level with almost no public debate at all. Flock Safety's automated license plate readers are now logging the movements of ordinary drivers in thousands of communities, feeding a searchable national database that police departments can query without a warrant. It's not FISA, but it's the same underlying bargain — trade blanket tracking for a promise of security — just with local government picking up the badge instead of the NSA.

If conversations like this get you thinking about who's watching and how, take a look at our camera map to see what's logging plates near you, and check our take-action page for ways to push back at the city-council level, where this fight is actually winnable.