- The press freedom group is calling for transparency about how authorities monitor VPNs
- It follows a warning that Americans using a VPN could be treated as foreign targets
- Advocates are urging Congress to pass the Government Surveillance Reform Act
The push for answers regarding warrantless government surveillance of virtual private networks (VPNs) is gaining decisive 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 stepped into the fray, warning that millions of Americans, as well as journalists who rely on the best VPN to protect sources and bypass censorship, could be inadvertently swept up in foreign spy operations.
The urgent call to action follows 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, questioning whether using a VPN deprives Americans of their constitutional privacy protections.
Under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and Executive Order 12333, intelligence agencies have broad powers to monitor foreign communications without a warrant.
However, because a VPN routes traffic to a remote location before connecting to the Internet, a 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 therefore “subject to few privacy protections.”
A threat to press freedom
For FPF, this default assumption that unknown traffic belongs to a non-US person is a massive red flag. By treating all VPN users as “foreigners,” the government could expose Americans to uncontrolled surveillance.
“And not just journalists, VPNs are privacy tools used by millions of Americans,” they added.
Because VPN providers typically commingle data from hundreds or thousands of users on a single server, intelligence officials can potentially monitor web traffic to trace connections and send legal requests to web service providers to learn more about the users connecting from a given IP address.
Using a VPN can expose Americans to warrantless government surveillance. We need much more transparency — and tighter limits on how the government can use this data to circumvent Americans’ privacy rights. https://t.co/hJQgh0M8ti13 April 2026
The FPF also highlighted a growing, futuristic threat to digital privacy. While premium VPNs provide a robust layer of encryption that secures web traffic from ISPs, intelligence agencies reportedly still collect large chunks 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 with the hope of reading it tomorrow using exponentially more powerful quantum computers.
According to the FPF, Google’s security researchers have warned that the industry should prepare for this potential risk “as soon as 2029”.
Calls for a surveillance reform
To prevent intelligence agencies from exploiting foreign surveillance powers, FPF urges Congress to implement strict safeguards before deciding to reauthorize Section 702 of FISA.
Chief among their demands is the closing of the “backdoor search loophole,” which would force the government to obtain a legal warrant before searching Americans’ communications collected under Section 702.
The foundation is also calling for an end to the “data broker loophole,” which currently allows federal agencies to buy sensitive data about citizens that would normally require a warrant 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: “It is therefore critical that the American public have answers to how our intelligence community monitors our VPN traffic”.
