- Press freedom group calls for transparency on how authorities monitor VPNs
- It goes on to warn that Americans who use a VPN may be treated as foreign targets.
- Activists urge Congress to pass Government Surveillance Reform Act
The push for answers about warrantless government surveillance of virtual private networks (VPNs) is gaining crucial momentum. Press freedom advocates are now publicly demanding transparency from US lawmakers about how intelligence agencies monitor the traffic of citizens trying to protect their digital privacy.
The Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) has entered the scene, warning that millions of Americans, as well as journalists who rely on the best VPN to protect their sources and bypass censorship, could be unwittingly drawn into foreign espionage operations.
The urgent call to action continues Recent revelations that the US intelligence community may be targeting citizens using commercial privacy tools. In March, six Democratic lawmakers wrote to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, asking whether using a VPN strips Americans of their constitutional privacy protections.
Under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and Executive Order 12333, intelligence agencies have broad authority to monitor foreign communications without a court order.
However, because a VPN directs traffic to a remote location before connecting to the web, the user’s true location is hidden. As the lawmakers’ letter highlighted, the government takes the position that data of unknown origin should be treated as foreign and is therefore “subject to few privacy protections.”
A threat to press freedom
For the FPF, this default assumption that unknown traffic belongs to a non-U.S. person is a huge red flag. By treating all VPN users as “foreigners,” the government could be exposing Americans to unchecked tracking.
“And not just journalists, VPNs are privacy tools used by millions of Americans,” they added.
Because VPN providers typically cobble data from hundreds or thousands of users onto a single server, intelligence officials could potentially monitor web traffic to trace connections, sending legal requests to web service providers for more information about users connecting from a given IP address.
Using a VPN can subject Americans to warrantless government surveillance. We need much more transparency and stricter limitations on how the government can use this data to circumvent Americans’ privacy rights. https://t.co/hJQgh0M8tiApril 13, 2026
The FPF also highlighted a growing futuristic threat to digital privacy. While premium VPNs provide a strong layer of encryption that protects web traffic from Internet service providers, intelligence agencies are still reportedly collecting large amounts of encrypted data.
The foundation warned that this data could be stored for “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks. In this scenario, attackers copy encrypted traffic today in the hopes of reading it tomorrow using exponentially more powerful quantum computers.
According to the FPF, Google security researchers have warned that the industry should prepare for this potential risk “as early as 2029.”
Call for surveillance reform
To prevent intelligence agencies from exploiting foreign surveillance powers, FPF urges Congress to implement strong safeguards before deciding whether to reauthorize Section 702 of FISA.
Chief among their demands is closing the “backdoor search loophole,” which would force the government to obtain a court order before recording Americans’ communications collected under Section 702.
The Foundation also calls for ending the “data broker loophole,” which currently allows federal agencies to purchase sensitive data on citizens that would normally require a court order to access.
Advocates argue that passage of the proposed Government Surveillance Reform Act would solidify these crucial changes. Until then, the FPF says the public deserves clarity: “Therefore, it is crucial that the American public have answers about how our intelligence community monitors our VPN traffic.”
