After revelations about former special counsel Jack Smith’s use of nondisclosure orders to monitor lawmakers’ data without notifying them in his Arctic Frost investigation, some on Capitol Hill are calling for surveillance reform.
As part of his Arctic Frost investigation of President Donald Trump and Republicans’ actions after the 2020 election, Smith sought the records of multiple Republican lawmakers.
In doing so, Smith requested—and was granted—nondisclosure orders blocking cell providers from informing the lawmakers of the surveillance.
The NDO Fairness Act essentially raises the bar for the government when requesting an order from a court, requiring that the court explain how providing notice to the individual being surveilled would result in endangering individuals or jeopardizing a case.
The bill has made some progress in the House, having been advanced by voice vote in the House Judiciary Committee.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, reiterated his backing for the bill in a statement.
“Jack Smith and partisan Arctic Frost investigators abused nondisclosure orders to secretly seize data from members of Congress,” Jordan told The Daily Signal.
“The NDO Fairness Act takes a critical step to rein in this surveillance overreach,” he added. “It forces the government to justify how long the order can last and makes sure those affected are notified.”
The vote in the committee was bipartisan, as the committee’s ranking member, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., endorsed the bill, calling it “reasonable” and “bipartisan.”
Recently, some in the Senate have been calling for NDO reform.
On April 21, the Senate held a hearing on Arctic Frost in which Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., called for reform.
“Many have argued those NDOs likely violated existing federal law,” she said. “The fact that at least one telecom provider, AT&T, refused to comply with that subpoena, and the Smith team didn’t push back, is evidence that they probably knew that their requests were illegal in the first place.”
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, is an advocate of the bill in the Senate, which he introduced alongside Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del.
“Bad actors in the United States government have covered up politically motivated domestic spying through abusing nondisclosure orders, preventing phone and tech companies from telling law-abiding Americans that they were being spied upon,” he told The Daily Signal.
Lee continued, “The NDO Fairness Act establishes safeguards to your personal data and makes it more difficult for the deep state to hide its domestic surveillance activities.”
