Joe Maring / Android Authority
TL;DR
- US lawmakers have asked the Director of National Intelligence to clarify how VPN use affects Americans’ surveillance protections.
- They warn that using VPN servers abroad could make users appear foreign, potentially exposing them to warrantless surveillance.
- VPNs are widely recommended for privacy, even by government agencies in the past.
You may already use a vpn to keep your online activity private, and you can naturally assume you’re adding an extra layer of protection by doing so. But lawmakers are now raising the possibility that, in some cases, it could actually affect your rights against government spying on your data.
As cabling In a letter sent to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, several Democratic lawmakers reportedly ask whether Americans who use VPNs could be treated as foreigners under US law. If so, that could mean losing certain protections against warrantless surveillance.
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The problem comes down to how VPNs handle your connection. By routing traffic through servers that are often located abroad, your activity may appear to originate in another country. For some users, that’s the point. But under U.S. intelligence standards, communications from an unknown location can be treated as foreign, which comes with fewer safeguards. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows agencies to collect large amounts of data targeting people outside the United States. In that context, an American using a VPN server abroad could not, at least in theory, look any different from a foreign user.
Lawmakers do not claim this is already happening, but argue that a lack of transparency is the concern. Americans spend billions each year on VPN services, many of which route traffic internationally, but there is little public guidance on how that might affect their rights. It would also create a bit of a contradiction, as agencies like the FBI and NSA have previously encouraged the use of VPNs as a way to improve privacy. The question now is whether that advice could come with some important trade-offs.
We will have to wait to find out if the government responds to the letter. Until then, if you live in the land of the free, it’s worth keeping in mind how routing your traffic through a foreign VPN server could affect the way your data is treated.
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