Washington, DC – The Reform Government Surveillance coalition (RGS) today released a statement applauding the House Judiciary Committee’s approval of the NDO Fairness Act for the second year in a row.

“This bipartisan bill strengthens the nondisclosure order (NDO) process by ensuring NDOs are issued after meaningful judicial review of the need for secrecy. This bill is a significant step toward improving laws to better protect the constitutional rights of individuals in the digital age.

“Secrecy should be the exception, not the norm. This bill provides courts with a meaningful standard to evaluate nondisclosure requests by law enforcement who seek access to an individual’s emails, photos, location information or other sensitive information. Furthermore, the NDO Fairness Act would help ensure the government is not imposing overly broad and indefinite NDOs, which are inconsistent with U.S. standards for pursuing court-ordered physical searches.

“With today’s markup and approval by the House Judiciary Committee, we encourage Congress to pass the NDO Fairness Act into law to provide much needed transparency and accountability to current NDO practices.”

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