Former State Department official John Napier Tye wants Americans to know about Executive Order 12333, which he says allows the National Security Agency to collect U.S. citizens’ online communications without oversight from the courts or Congress.

The 1981 executive order authorizes intelligence agencies to collect communications overseas without a warrant. Tye says loopholes allow for the collection of American emails and other communications routinely copied to servers outside the U.S., even if the sender and recipient are not abroad.

“Once that email leaves the territory of the United States, Executive Order 12333 authorizes the NSA to collect it, so long as it’s in the course of a lawful foreign intelligence investigation,” Tye tells U.S. News. “There are massive, widespread constitutional violations going on every single day, and I filed a complaint to try to stop them.”

Tye went public with a carefully worded editorial published Friday by The Washington Post, after filing complaints with the State Department, the NSA and the House and Senate intelligence committees.

“Based in part on classified facts that I am prohibited by law from publishing, I believe that Americans should be even more concerned about the collection and storage of their communications under Executive Order 12333 than under Section 215,” Tye wrote, referring to the section of the Patriot Act the NSA uses to justify its bulk collection of U.S. phone records.

“Consider the possibility that Section 215 collection does not represent the outer limits of collection on U.S. persons but rather is a mechanism to backfill that portion of U.S. person data that cannot be collected overseas under 12333,” he wrote. “No warrant or court approval is required, and such collection never need be reported to Congress.”

Tye worked as section chief for Internet freedom in the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor for more than three years, leaving in April 2014 to become a legal director at the progressive advocacy group Avaaz.

“I’m doing the job I signed up to do when I started at the State Department,” Tye says. “My job at the State Department was to promote Internet freedom around the world [and] I want to see the U.S. embody the same ideals that it’s promoting.”

Tye says his editorial was cleared by the NSA before publication. “They didn’t ask me to make any changes,” he says. An NSA spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

Tye feels the executive order has been overlooked as much of the public debate about NSA surveillance has focused on Section 215 of the Patriot Act and Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which authorizes the collection of foreign targets’ communications within the U.S., following exiled whistleblower Edward Snowden’s first disclosures in June 2013.

Attorney Jesselyn Radack, a former Department of Justice ethics adviser who now works at the Government Accountability Project, praised Tye’s decision to come forward, but says she fears a vengeful government response.

Radack is not representing Tye, but has represented several government whistleblowers, including former NSA employee Thomas Drake. He was tried under the Espionage Act for allegedly mishandling classified information in 2011, but later agreed to lesser charges. As such Drake didn't serve prison time.

“The way the government has treated whistleblowers like Thomas Drake, who went through every possible internal channel and still got prosecuted for espionage, I certainly worry that the government may retaliate, probably by never hiring Mr. Tye or giving him a security clearance again,” Radack tells U.S. News.

Tye, however, isn’t concerned.

“I don’t think there should be any retribution in this case because I haven’t broken any laws,” he says. “I took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and this is part of that effort. I haven’t disclosed classified information to anyone who was not authorized to receive it, and I followed the law the whole way through.”

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He also believes many executive branch employees agree with him that the order allows for violations of Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights and expects President Barack Obama to come around after reviewing the issue.

“I’m not worried about retribution because I think the government will do the right thing on this,” he says. “I think that the president, once he understands the scale of constitutional problems from 12333, will agree that we need a change…He could do it with the stroke of his pen by amending the executive order.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a loud supporter of the most widely debated NSA programs, told McClatchy in November she believes there is inadequate oversight of programs authorized by the executive order. “I don’t think privacy protections are built into it,” she said. “It’s an executive policy. The executive controls intelligence in the country.”

Though he considers himself a whistleblower, Tye says he’s no leaker. He says he doesn’t possess any classified documents and will not be making any unauthorized disclosures about classified programs. He sees his whistleblowing as similar to pre-Snowden warnings about mass surveillance from Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.