The US has voted to allow law enforcement agencies to access web browsing data without a warrant.
This has substantially increased the government’s surveillance powers amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell led the takeover as part of a reauthorization of the Patriot Act, which gives domestic surveillance powers to federal agencies.
For more than a decade, privacy advocates have warned that giving law enforcement agencies access to web search queries and browsing history without warranty would allow them to suppress activists, labor organizers, or anyone who is seen as a threat to the government.
“Today the Senate made clear that the purpose of the PATRIOT Act is to spy on Americans, no warrants or due process necessary,” Dayton Young, director of product at Fight For the Future, told Motherboard.
