Growing warnings in Congress about expanding US wiretapping powers

“Business owners of buildings where tens of millions of Americans go to work every day could be forced to help the government with oversight,” he said. Unlike Verizon or Google, he noted, these entities often lack the ability to isolate individual messages, meaning they may be forced to give NSA personnel “direct access to their communications equipment and all communications going through that equipment, including purely internal communications.”

James Cherniawski, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Consumer Choice, a free-market think tank, called the expansion “extremely broad” and said it “brought a lot of businesses into this regulatory apparatus that were never intended to be there.” He noted that the Information Technology Industry Council, a major technology trade association, took the unusual step of asking Congress to narrow the definition.

The panel also aired what’s known as “anti-brokerage” — the ability for agencies to buy location, browsing and other sensitive data about Americans from private companies instead of obtaining it with a warrant.

“It happens all the time,” Guitin said. He noted that the Supreme Court has held that historical cell location information is protected by the Fourth Amendment when requested directly, but agencies claim they can buy the same data from brokers without a warrant.

Tolman said the secrecy surrounding these contracts and purchases would make it difficult for Congress or the courts to enforce any restrictions.

“Without being able to clarify what they’re doing and who they’re contracting with, it’s going to be very difficult to stop it,” he said.

Cherniawski added that such reforms would “neither end surveillance nor prevent legitimate national security operations,” arguing that “the country will not go dark.”