Senator Ron Wyden has informed colleagues that communications within the chamber “face serious cyber and surveillance risks, directly threatening the Senate‘s independence and the separation of powers.”
Why It Matters
Wyden’s concerns follow but are not directly correlated to U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other intelligence leaders within the Trump administration who were maligned for numerous communications on the Signal app, at one point including a journalist in a text chain about war plans in Yemen.
What To Know
Wyden wrote a letter dated May 21 describing an internal investigation that revealed that until recently, senators “have been kept in the dark about executive branch surveillance of Senate phones because the three major phone carriers—AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile—failed to establish systems to notify offices about surveillance requests, as required by their Senate contracts.”
While the issue has been rectified for Senate-funded lines, according to Wyden, “significant gaps remain,” including for senators’ personal and campaign phones—which the senator from Oregon suggested should be switched to other carriers that would provide notice of government surveillance.
He’s also encouraging law changes that would allow the Sergeant at Arms (SAA) to protect senators’ phones and accounts from foreign and domestic cyber threats.
A spokesperson for Wyden deferred to the senator’s letter.
“We are complying with our obligations to the Senate Sergeant at Arms,” AT&T spokesperson Alex Byers told Newsweek on Wednesday. “We have received no legal demands regarding Senate offices under the current contract, which began last June.”
Newsweek reached out to Verizon and T-Mobile for comment.
Wyden highlighted two separate instances that ultimately prompted his letter.
One involved the Chinese hacking operation now known as “Salt Typhoon,” which not only breached at least eight U.S. telecom companies but also the communications of senators and senior staff within Congress. In January, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned a Beijing-based cybersecurity company for its alleged link to the hacks.
Another was a report released last December by the Department of Justice‘s (DOJ) Inspector General revealing that the DOJ violated its own policies by obtaining text and phone records of two members of Congress in addition to 43 Congressional staffers in 2017 and 2018, during the previous Trump administration. National security advisors and staff from the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees were also compromised.
The report was initiated after publications including CNN, New York Times and the Washington Post published articles in the spring and summer of 2017 that contained classified information, some of which was classified as “Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information.”
Roughly the same number of Democrats (21) and Republicans (20) were affected.
The Inspector General ultimately “did not find any evidence of retaliatory or political motivation by the career prosecutors.”
“These incidents highlight the vulnerability of Senate communications to foreign adversaries, but also to surveillance by federal, state and local law enforcement,” Wyden wrote. “Executive branch surveillance poses a significant threat to the Senate’s independence and the foundational principle of separation of powers.
“If law enforcement officials…can secretly obtain senators’ location data or call histories, our ability to perform our constitutional duties is severely threatened. This kind of unchecked surveillance can chill critical oversight activities, undermine confidential communications essential for legislative deliberations, and ultimately erode the legislative branch’s co-equal status.”
While Congress enacted protections in 2020 for Senate data held by third parties, Wyden claims that his staff discovered that notifications to the aforementioned wireless carriers were not occurring.
What People Are Saying
Verizon spokesperson Richard Young to Politico: “We respect the Senator’s view that providers should give notice to Senators if we receive legal process regarding their use of their personal devices, but disagree with his policy position.”
What Happens Next
Wyden’s staff investigation has led to AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile indicating that they will provide notice if senators’ data will be shared with law enforcement officials.
He added that while AT&T and Verizon only provide notice of surveillance of phone lines paid for by the Senate, T-Mobile informed his staff that it will provide notice for senators’ campaign or personal lines flagged as such by the SAA.
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