Anthropic vs Washington.

Dave Bittner: Hello, everyone, and welcome to "Caveat", N2K CyberWire's privacy, surveillance, law and policy podcast. I'm Dave Bittner, and joining me is my co-host, Ben Yelin, from the University of Maryland Center for Cyber Health and Hazard Strategies. Hey there, Ben.

Ben Yelin: Hello, Dave.

Dave Bittner: On today's show, Ben has an update on Anthropic's lawsuits against the Pentagon and other federal agencies. I've got the latest on the looming Section 702 deadline. While this show covers legal topics and Ben is a lawyer, the views expressed do not constitute legal advice. For official legal advice on any of the topics we cover, please contact your attorney.

Dave Bittner: All right, Ben, kind of an interesting week since we last saw each other here. Why don't you start things off for us? What are you tracking?

Ben Yelin: Certainly has been. So there is some litigation going around on the whole Anthropic dust-up with the federal government. So our listeners will certainly recall Anthropic had that contract with the Pentagon. The Pentagon wanted them to give the Secretary of War and other decision-makers more authority. Anthropic resisted, saying there are two lines they didn't want to cross, domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons. The Pentagon says, great, your services are no longer necessary here, and we're going to use a federal statute to issue basically a government-wide and contractor-wide ban on your services, saying that you are a national security risk.

Dave Bittner: Right.

Ben Yelin: So Anthropic, I think, had a pretty decent case to be made in federal court, and they brought several cases in multiple jurisdictions. One of them was in the federal district court of Northern California, which is where they are domiciled as an entity. And this was decided by a federal district court judge in late March. They found that Anthropic was likely to succeed on the merits of its First Amendment retaliation claim. Basically, the nature of that claim was they are being punished for their speech and expression. They're not being punished for failing to fulfill the obligations of the contract. They're being punished because they publicly said that those two lines they weren't going to cross, and it's a content-based restriction on their expression rights, meaning the government has to have a really good reason to do it. And the government has to have some type of narrowly tailored method of achieving that objective and having this kind of blanket ban on the use of Anthropic, on Claude, on all government, I guess, servers, websites, whatever, and those of government contractors, of which the universe is quite large, that was overbroad, and it didn't fulfill strict scrutiny. So Judge in Northern California issued an injunction. It barred 17 federal agencies from enforcing the government-wide supply chain risk designation. That's the designation that says no federal agencies or contractors can use Anthropic services because it poses a national security supply chain risk. So that decision barred 17 federal agencies, although not the Pentagon, notably, from enforcing this government-wide supply chain risk designation.

Dave Bittner: Okay.

Ben Yelin: Then there was a separate suit brought against the Pentagon in the D.C. Circuit, and this went up to the D.C. Court of Appeals. And basically, the Court of Appeals did your typical procedural dance about whether to issue a stay. So they knew that this is a very complicated issue on the merits. Like, there are some really high stakes here. Anthropic is alleging that they were retaliated against because of their expressional rights. We're not clear how to weigh the First Amendment interests on Anthropic's part against the government's interest in procuring a service that they can use to protect us, procuring a service that they can trust in matters of national security. So when you have a case like that where the merits are going to take a while to adjudicate, the court will go through a couple of tests to figure out whether to issue a stay. So basically, they're answering the question, what happens in the meantime until we can have full briefings, we can have oral arguments, we can have a well-thought-out decision? And they weigh a bunch of things. So the first is whether the moving party would suffer irreparable harm, some type of major financial or reputational harm. And here, they say, you know, Anthropic kind of will suffer that harm. I mean, losing out on the Pentagon contract, which is the issue at case in this case, is a huge deal to them financially and reputationally. And they certainly might take a hit here. But then the other part of the analysis about whether to issue a stay is comparing the government's interest as the defendant against Anthropic's interest. And that's kind of what's called the balance of equities. Like, what's more fair? What side are we willing to give the benefit of the doubt at this point in the proceeding, given what we know now, to determine the status quo until we can hear this case on the merits?

Dave Bittner: Okay.

Ben Yelin: And the court here emphasized national security as the superior interest. That any type of judicial interference in the Pentagon's sourcing choices is a big deal. It's not something that courts generally want to do to question civilian leaders during national security crises, especially now that we're in this conflict with Iran. And they're not comfortable doing that. So for the time being, until this case gets to the merits, Anthropic's application for a stay pending appeal was denied. And the Pentagon can still enforce its ban against the use of Anthropic services. So how this applies to contractors, if any contractors are doing work on behalf of the Department of Defense, they cannot use Claude Anthropic services. If they are using it for other purposes, it seems like they generally will be able to use Anthropic.

Dave Bittner: Now, how did the two different cases intersect?

Ben Yelin: So that's what's really, really interesting here. Basically, it was a disagreement on what should happen while the merits of the First Amendment claim and other administrative claims are adjudicated. The judge in the Northern California case, as it applied to other federal agencies besides the Pentagon, basically said the threat of irreparable harm from assuming Anthropic is correct and that their First Amendment rights are being somehow violated here is more significant for Anthropic. They're going to lose money. They're going to suffer reputational harm, any deprivation of their speech or associational rights definitely confers legal standing on them and compare that to the needs of these other non-Pentagon federal agencies. If you look at that balance of equities, it tilts in favor of Anthropic, whereas the D.C. Circuit looked at it in the Pentagon context and said, we're going the other way on this. When we're talking about national security, we're talking about defense work, defense contractors, state secrets, things relating to the conflict in Iran, we are hesitant while this case proceeds on the merits to issue a type of stay to prevent the Pentagon from enforcing this ban. Because the effect would be basically forcing the Pentagon to use Claude's services against their will, which they're just not willing to do.

Dave Bittner: Right.

Ben Yelin: So taken literally, what that means is the ban, as applied to all federal agencies that were part of that Northern California federal district court case, the ban is blocked as it applies to them. As it applies to the Department of Defense because of the D.C. case, the ban remains in full force. The other thing here that's worth mentioning is none of this concerns the actual merits of the case. Like, we still haven't gone through the process in any court of writing briefs, having not only the parties write briefs, but I'm sure the ACLU is going to want to weigh in. I'm sure other interest groups, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, EPIC, they're all going to want to weigh in as well. People who are concerned about civil liberties with things like amicus briefs. And we haven't gotten to that at all yet. That's completely unresolved. But I think we have this kind of bifurcated status quo that's just a little weird. And it's just based on kind of a procedural posture of each of these cases.

Dave Bittner: It seems like we're in a very weird place right now where, I mean, to me, on its face, it looks like what happened here is when we're looking at the bigger picture of the actual harm, potential harm against Anthropic, Anthropic said no. And in response, I would say in retaliation, the Trump administration said, okay, fine, you're a national security risk. Like they were fine with Anthropic right up until the moment they said no. Certainly, you'd imagine the Pentagon would have done their due diligence before then. That's what it appears like. Obviously, the government's going to make their own case that that's not what happened, right?

Ben Yelin: Right. Now, you could say in defense of the government that what they really needed to see was whether Anthropic would follow their dictates related to autonomous weapon systems and national surveillance. And the fact that they wouldn't in and of itself presented the national security threat. I disagree with that. I also think if they really did believe that, you would prevent its use at the Pentagon and with Pentagon contractors, not with the Department of the Treasury or the EPA or the Department of Transportation.

Dave Bittner: Right. Right.

Ben Yelin: So you know, I think on the merits, I still think that Anthropic has a very good case that this was retaliation for First Amendment protected speech and that the government's mode here of excluding them from contracts within the entire federal government is overbroad and is not narrowly tailored to the government's legitimate national security interests. And that's why I think if I had to guess on the merits, if we get, you know, a decent panel of judges to review it, I still think Anthropic has a very good chance of proceeding here. But it means we're going to go months as we prepare for actual litigation. And at least the Pentagon has gotten what it wants. And they can continue to use the alternative service that they've procured for artificial intelligence, which is OpenAI. And they can do that without the specter of litigation hanging over them, at least for the foreseeable future, maybe the next six months or so.

Dave Bittner: If you're one of the other government agencies that is that the California court ruled affecting, right, how do you respond to this? I mean, because it seems to me like you still have the power of the federal government. You know what the Pentagon and the White House wants you to do here. Do you slow roll things? I guess, you know, there's a letter of the law here.

Ben Yelin: Totally.

Dave Bittner: Then there's like, meanwhile, in the real world, what do you do?

Ben Yelin: If I'm in charge of procurement at the IRS, like just because they were affected by this district court decision, I would not go out and sign a contract with Anthropic because somebody is going to notice that.

Dave Bittner: Yeah.

Ben Yelin: And then you as the person who procured the contract is going to be persona non grata.

Dave Bittner: Right.

Ben Yelin: I assume that when we get to the merits of the case, all of that will be discussed. Like, even if there is a not a de facto ban, not a de facto legal ban, like if there's some internal administration policy that acts as sort of a de facto ban, then does that change the legal analysis? Is this still retaliation for a First Amendment protected activity? To me, it's really hard to say. Certainly, the government could make a case that they should control with which entities they choose to contract. They can choose the qualifications for those contractors. And one of the qualifications they want to choose is a company that won't deny them mass surveillance and use of autonomous weapons. And that's probably the argument they're going to try and make. The counterargument to that is that they already had existing contracts with many of these agencies. And what happened with the fallout at the Pentagon is completely unrelated to the existing work that was being done under those contracts. And so that's where it does seem more like retaliation. And I think it's just a matter of how the courts see these types of informal bans as if they're akin to the announced ban that was codified through executive order or if it's something else entirely. And I don't really know how courts are going to view that.

Dave Bittner: Could this be a case where Anthropic wins the battle but loses the war? In other words, you know, the Pentagon says, I think -- what did this article say? There's like a $200 million contract is part of this. You know, the Pentagon could say, fine, here's your $200 million. Go away. So Anthropic, you know, wins that but still ends up not doing any business with the Pentagon.

Ben Yelin: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I don't know how much $200 million means to Anthropic's CEO. It's certainly significant.

Dave Bittner: Well, it is. But yeah, you're right. It's all relative.

Ben Yelin: It's all relative.

Dave Bittner: Yeah.

Ben Yelin: He has a lot of money and I'm sure you could make up that $200 million relatively quickly at the pace these things are going on.

Dave Bittner: Right.

Ben Yelin: And maybe in his view, like the increased reputational value of standing up to the Pentagon and saying there are lines we are not going to cross, and then seeing one of your competitors the very next day be like, hey, Pentagon daddy, I'll do whatever you want. I think there's some reputational value there, especially among people who are privacy conscious, security conscious and who care about things like ethics.

Dave Bittner: How quaint.

Ben Yelin: I know. So quaint. So yeah, I do think it's one of those things where it's not entirely clear to me what Anthropic would want in the long run. I think part of a favorable decision for them would just be beyond restoring the contract that they had with the Pentagon and getting that money. Just some type of official adjudication that they were punished for their associational rights and so that in the future with this precedent set, other companies who are in the space will feel more comfortable about trying to set boundaries even through their contracts with federal agencies because they know they won't be punished for speaking out against what they see as abuses of their services. And so that could, at least in my mind, really be the long-term impact is that other companies, if Anthropic ends up prevailing in this litigation, might feel emboldened to speak their mind and to tell the government no when they request some type of capability. So I think that's certainly a possible outcome here.

Dave Bittner: To what degree does the court have the ability to challenge the government's assessment of being a national security risk?

Ben Yelin: Very little. I mean, courts are trained, both through precedent and just through practical considerations, to defer to an executive branch's national security determinations. And there are a couple of reasons for that. One, a lot of judges don't see it as their proper role under our Constitution to be second-guessing the administration's decisions. It's really the president as commander-in-chief under Article 2 who gets to determine what counts as a national security threat. So I think courts are very, very deferential to the executive branch on this question. I think that's all well and good, and I don't want to make this like a totally about Trump thing. But when you have an administration that's not always on the level and has been known to kind of lie and exaggerate about certain things, then I think that presumption gets thrown into question. And that really, I mean, that can happen with any administration. I think the deference to the executive branch is premised on the idea that presidents aren't going to screw around with national security. Like there's no reason for them to come out with like some type of pretextual argument. And I just don't think that's really a trustworthy viewpoint. The practical difficulty is a lot of information that would allow the court to go under the hood and see, is this national security interest actually legitimate? They're never going to have access to that. Basically, the Pentagon and other federal agencies can use a bunch of legal tools, including things like the state secrets privilege, to prevent that information from ever making it into a court of law. And that's kind of the practical difficulty. So they're limited both by their own precedent, which is to be very deferential, and also just through the fact that they don't have an opportunity to look under the hood here. Me, just kind of knowing the history of invoking national security to do bad things, in my view, I'm always very skeptical of this type of deference. I mean, the best example is the foundational case on the state secrets privilege comes from the 1950s. It's Reynolds v. the United States, when widows of men who died in an airplane crash tried to sue the Air Force for damages. And the Air Force said, we can't reveal that. This relates to an extremely classified government program. It's a new kind of airplane, et cetera, et cetera. And we found out 40 years later, it was on a "This American Life" episode, if you want to search it, that they were just lying. Like, there was no protected national security information. They were just negligent in how they designed the plane, and that these widows should have been entitled to relief in that case. So that, to me, is like, that's the original sin. Like, the entire doctrine comes from a case that ended up being a lie. So why should we ever give respect and deference to the executive branch's determination? Again, that's just me. You know, I think there's certainly a lot of people who would agree with that level of deference. It's not the judicial branch's role to get involved in this, but I retain that level of skepticism.

Dave Bittner: Yeah. So as always, I'm going to ask you, what sort of timeline do you suspect we're on with something like this?

Ben Yelin: Ugh. I'm always dreading that question, because I really wish I could give you, like, bam, you know, this is going to happen. And in two months, we'll be done by June 15th, and we'll have some resolution to this issue. I think since both of these courts have kind of determined what the status quo is, it's going to take a while for this case to be heard on the merits. Especially in the California case, because you're still at the district court level. So we're going to have to go through the appeals process. We'll see, like, what the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has to say on this matter. You know, it can take a long time to prepare for a merits hearing on this issue, just because there's a lot of briefings involved. It's a novel issue, and it's a complicated issue. So this is the type of thing where I think it could take a year or more until we have a resolution, which is frustrating. It's really frustrating. You know, we'd like to have some clarity in this space, but our legal system moves very slowly. I know we say that all the time, but it's certainly a source of frustration for me and other people who want some finality on this question.

Dave Bittner: Right. All right. Well, time will tell, and we'll have a link to that article from the New York Times in the show notes. Let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsor. We'll be right back after this.

Dave Bittner: All right, Ben, let's get to my story here this week, and this comes from the Washington Post. This is an article written by Ellen Nakashima, Warren Strobel, and Noah Robertson. It's titled, Powerful Surveillance Program Faces Obstacles as Renewal Deadline Looms. We are, of course, talking about Section 702.

Ben Yelin: If we were really good about tagging things, how many of our 304 episodes do you think would be tagged with 702?

Dave Bittner: Oh, my goodness.

Ben Yelin: 150 of them?

Dave Bittner: Yeah, I mean, it's a good -- yeah, I wonder where it ranks in terms of things that have been mentioned here. It's got to be in the top ten.

Ben Yelin: Absolutely.

Dave Bittner: Probably the top five.

Ben Yelin: It's a never-ending saga.

Dave Bittner: Yeah, so I guess what is happening here is we're coming up on a deadline. I believe it's the end of this month. It's the end of April, where Section 702 expires, and so we've had some movement. What's the latest here, Ben? Can you take us through what we're up against?

Ben Yelin: Sure. So as we're recording this, the House is coming back into session after a couple of weeks of recess where the Department of Homeland Security was still not funded, but that's a topic for another day.

Dave Bittner: Right.

Ben Yelin: And one of the items on the agenda is a clean reauthorization of Section 702.

Dave Bittner: Yeah.

Ben Yelin: The Trump administration has requested a two-year so-called clean authorization. What that means is the program will be extended as-is. A lot of civil liberties advocates on both sides of the political aisle are pushing very hard for a warrant requirement to search, to query the Section 702 database. And leadership in the House and the Senate and both parties have been reluctant to embrace that. It failed by a single vote in the House two years ago during the previous reauthorization. So it's certainly something that's come extremely close. But the executive branches of the Trump administration and the Biden administration before it going all the way back to Obama have been very reticent to give up their power to do backdoor warrantless searches in this 702 database. And I don't think anybody could have predicted what we've seen, where there are so many incidentally collected communications that you can learn a lot about U.S. persons by doing these queries, especially with advanced AI tools. You know, it's become easier to sift through these really large databases. There are a couple of really important complications here. I mentioned this a couple of episodes ago when we talked about this. So you know how the FISA court reviews and then approves Section 702 on an annual basis?

Dave Bittner: Right.

Ben Yelin: And I kind of surmised that their annual reauthorization was going to take place around this time of year. Well, I was right, at least about one thing.

Dave Bittner: Congratulations.

Ben Yelin: There is a largely -- you know, most of the decision is redacted. But we did see a decision from the FISA court reauthorizing Section 702 and its current minimization procedures all the way through March of 2027. So that might at least take away some of the urgency from Congress. It's possible that the true deadline is now March 2027 and not the end of April because the FISA court itself had said the program is legal as long as our authorization remains in effect. Whatever has happened with the statute is not relevant to that analysis. Because the FISA court made a decision for the forthcoming year pursuant to the laws at the time, that still retains legal authority all the way through March 2027, even if Congress doesn't reauthorize this program.

Dave Bittner: If you say so.

Ben Yelin: Right. So the thing is, like, the decision-makers here are the big tech companies because they're the ones who are going to be getting these orders. And if they have any doubt that producing the requested documents or whatever is being requested under Section 702 is going to expose them to some type of legal liability, they might be really reticent to comply. So the court might be saying you actually have until March 2027, but it's possible the companies say, like, we don't want to take that risk because we don't want to be subject to litigation. Maybe the FISA court says this, but if this went up to a federal court of appeals or the Supreme Court, they might say, actually, you didn't have the authority to hand over those records. And now you're going to be sued as part of some class action for violating people's civil liberties. They don't want to find themselves in that situation.

Dave Bittner: I don't want to be snarky, but I wonder if the tech companies are worried that if they refuse, they could be named national security risks.

Ben Yelin: Yes. I think they're very, very concerned about that. They do not want to get on this administration's bad side.

Dave Bittner: Right.

Ben Yelin: I actually think that's a really live, important point here.

Dave Bittner: Really? It's not just a joke.

Ben Yelin: No, it's not.

Dave Bittner: Okay.

Ben Yelin: I think President Trump made very clear in his campaign and then in the early days of his administration that the tech companies are going to have to play ball. As it relates to things like mergers and acquisitions, various policies, executive orders, tech companies are going to have to be more compliant and they can't be adversarial the way he thinks they were adversarial during his first term. And that's why many of these titans sat behind President Trump at his first inauguration. It's why Jeff Bezos is coming to the Oval Office with ornate gifts to give the president. And he's changed the editorial posture of the Washington Post so that it's not as confrontational, you know, all that fun stuff. I think that's all part of the story here. So yeah, I don't think that's really a joke at all. I mean, I think they're going to have to be wary of that. But then there's Senator Ron Wyden. So he's always a character.

Dave Bittner: Right. Yeah.

Ben Yelin: Basically, there are a group of House Democrats who are supportive of a so-called clean extension to 702. And they've been meeting in the past couple of days trying to figure out to account for the Republicans who might vote no. Like, let's get a coalition of Democrats together to get this thing across the finish line. And what Ron Wyden is saying is, I can't really give you all the information, but don't do that. There's something within the FISA court order about inappropriate collection of U.S. persons data due to some filtering errors. And we don't have all the information on it. But Wyden kind of hints that this is a systemic problem that we haven't resolved. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we haven't resolved some of the querying issues that plagued Section 702 in the past.

Dave Bittner: Right.

Ben Yelin: We need to provide more oversight before we grant this blank check for the next two years.

Dave Bittner: So Wyden is kind of playing the canary in the coal mine of saying, I know something you don't know. Trust me here. You don't want to authorize this because reasons.

Ben Yelin: Right. And he's also saying, I'm willing to brief you and your staff on it. So let's get in a SCIF, a secure facility, and let's discuss what some of these issues are. And I'm wondering if House Democrats and their staff members are going to take him up on that. Because I think that's a really interesting element here. The other thing is they extended the authority of FISA 702 to cover the -- I don't know exactly how to put this, but basically like anybody who has some type of wireless equipment within their dominion. So like a business that owns a server or even an individual person who has access to that server, they can be served with directives under Section 702 in the way that they wouldn't have in the past. It previously just kind of went through the telecommunications companies. And now we're going directly to the sources. And that was due to language that was added in the 2024 reauthorization. But at the time, it was the Biden administration telling House Democrats, like, don't worry about this. We're not going to go in to the mom-and-pop store and demand that they hand over their server. We're not going to go to the cable guy and be like, can you extract what you found when you were installing cable and Internet in this guy's house? Like, we're going to construe this very, very narrowly. But that was the Biden administration. What Wyden is saying is basically, my fellow Democrats, we know what Donald Trump is capable of. We know he's on a path to destroying his enemies. We know that the number of queries in his administration in the Section 702 database has increased. So we should be much more wary about granting him any type of enhanced authority, especially without some of the protections that Wyden's advocating for, like a warrant requirement. I think that's really the main one. So whew, you know, I'm sure somebody's betting this on Kalshi or whatever, which I also have problems with.

Dave Bittner: Right, well, I'm taking a closer look at this article. It says the expiration date is April 20th.

Ben Yelin: 4/20.

Dave Bittner: Coming up pretty fast here.

Ben Yelin: Yeah, I don't know if they're going to be able to get it done. We're recording this six days from now. That's a few days in Congress. I have a hard time seeing it getting done by then. I mean, maybe sometime by the end of the month they'll work out reauthorization. They also have a lot of other things they have to do. Reopening the Department of Homeland Security, first and foremost. I don't think they have a firm resolution on that quite yet. Republicans are trying to put together another reconciliation bill to fund immigration enforcement for the next year. All these members of Congress have started doing really bad things. So there are going to be votes on expelling them. Although, two of them resigned already.

Dave Bittner: Right, right.

Ben Yelin: But there are another couple of members. And that's going to take up some debate time. And there is no consensus around how to proceed on 702.

Dave Bittner: That's part of what makes it so interesting, right, is that you've got -- it is truly bipartisan.

Ben Yelin: In both directions. Right.

Dave Bittner: Right. Yep.

Ben Yelin: So I don't know which coalition is bigger at this point. In the past, it's always at least narrowly been the pro-702, the pro, we need this for national security folks that win out just in the numbers game. And if I had to guess, maybe they'll probably win out again. You know, I certainly think on the Republican side, the fact that Trump is explicitly calling for this reauthorization without any amendments or without any civil liberties safeguards, I think is important to the prospects of this passing. I don't get the sense, though, that Trump is calling members on the Hill about this. Like, he's still very skeptical of FISA because he thinks his campaign in 2016 was spied on because of the FISA process. So I think he's doing what his national security advisors are telling him to do, which is make sure you have the 702 authority. But, if you ask me, I don't think his heart's fully in it. I think he's thinking about other things. Certainly, he could have some influence on Republican members. Either way, it's going to be really, really close. I could see one of those situations where it's very heavily orchestrated so that a maximum number of members are given the opportunity to vote against it so that it still passes. So you know, if you need 216 votes, like the parties come together and we'll get enough members in safe districts and enough members who've already voted for Section 702 in the past to get together in a coalition to get this right across the finish line. And everyone else is free to vote now. I think there might be some kind of coordination around that. What's so hard to know is usually, like, the parties themselves can whip these votes. So they go to their members and say, like, what are you thinking on this? You know, we can get a rough calculation of how many votes we have. And if you're the majority party, the magic number is 218. So you're like, are we close to that number? But parties can only whip their own members. And I don't think the parties are going to be sharing information with one another. So it's just hard to know until we actually see a vote, like, where the balance is going to come out here. So it's a very uncertain outcome. When you add the complication of the FISA court reauthorizing 702 for another year and the uncertainty around the authority of that authorization, it's a bit of a cluster.

Dave Bittner: Yeah. To me, the wild card is the participation from the telecommunications providers. That, you know, even if there's a temporary extension on it, they may not feel like the potential liability is worth it.

Ben Yelin: Totally. And it would have a ripple effect. So the first company would do it. They'd put out a statement saying, like, we don't see this as adequate authority to comply with these directives. And once one company does it, it could be contagious. And throughout the rest of the industry, they might say, we're not going to comply.

Dave Bittner: Yeah.

Ben Yelin: I always emphasize here that, like, this is a really important program. It's certainly been subject to abuse. We've seen it used inappropriately on Black Lives Matter protesters and January 6th protesters. We've seen it used to surveil members of Congress. So it's certainly something that could be abused. But everyone from whatever political tribe you're part of agrees about the importance of the authority for protecting national security. They might not agree whether it's worth it. But I think there's universal agreement that, like, this is very effective. There's a reason that the executive branch and all presidential administrations have fought so hard for clean extensions of Section 702. So it's not like some other programs where you could just kind of say, like, yeah, let's let this expire. Like, there are other authorities we could use. This one's really important. And it just raises the stakes that much more.

Dave Bittner: Yeah. All right. Well, we will have a link to that story from The Washington Post in our show notes. So please do check that out. And, of course, we would love to hear from you. If there's something you'd like us to consider for the show, please email us. It's caveat@n2k.com.

Dave Bittner: And that is "Caveat", brought to you by N2K CyberWire. We'd love to know what you think of this podcast. Your feedback ensures we deliver the insights that keep you a step ahead in the rapidly changing world of cybersecurity. If you like our show, please share a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Please also fill out the survey in the show notes or send an email to caveat@n2k.com. This episode is produced by Liz Stokes. Our executive producer is Jennifer Eiben. The show is mixed by Trey Hester. Peter Kilpe is our publisher. I'm Dave Bittner.

Ben Yelin: And I'm Ben Yelin.

Dave Bittner: Thanks for listening.