ACLU Files FOIA Lawsuit for Reagan Executive Order on Surveillance of Americansselfnews Post The executive order, signed by President Reagan in 1981 and modified many times since, is the authority relied upon by the intelligence agencies, including the NSA, to conduct surveillance of foreigners outside of the United States. According to recent reports, however, the government relies upon the executive order to sweep up the international communications of countless Americans. For example, it collect billions of records every day containing the location information of mobile phones, including Americans phones; to harvest the address books of email users; and to sweep up the information of users of Google and Yahoo as it travels between those companies data centers abroad. The lawsuit was filed to enforce FOIA requests submitted to various agencies in May 2013. The ACLUs requests seek information about USSID 18 and other supposed protections that are in place for Americans whose communications are ensnared in surveillance conducted under the executive order, and whether those protections are adequate and consistent with the Constitution. Source: ACLU 