Do US-based VPN users risk being treated as foreign surveillance targets?

You might already use a VPN to keep your online activity private, and you may naturally assume you’re adding an extra layer of protection by doing so. But lawmakers are now raising the possibility that, in some cases, it could actually affect your rights against government spying on your data.

As Wired reports, in a letter sent to the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, several Democratic lawmakers are asking whether Americans who use VPNs could be treated as foreigners under US law. If so, that could mean losing certain protections against warrantless surveillance.

The issue comes down to how VPNs handle your connection. By routing traffic through servers that are often located overseas, your activity can appear to originate from another country. For some users, that’s the point.  But under US intelligence rules, communications from an unknown location may be treated as foreign, which carries fewer safeguards. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows agencies to collect large amounts of data targeting people outside the US. In that context, an American using a VPN server abroad could, at least in theory, look no different from a foreign user.

The lawmakers are not alleging that this is already happening, but argue that the lack of transparency is the concern. Americans spend billions each year on VPN services, many of which route traffic internationally, yet there is little public guidance on how that might affect their rights. It would also create a bit of a contradiction, since agencies like the FBI and NSA have previously encouraged VPN use as a way to improve privacy. The question now is whether that advice could come with some serious trade-offs.

We’ll have to wait to find out if the government responds to the letter. Until then, if you live in the land of the free, it’s worth being mindful of how routing your traffic through an overseas VPN server could affect how your data is treated.