An anonymous reader cites a report from Wired. The controversial U.S. wiretapping program is just days away from expiring and has cleared a major hurdle before it can be reauthorized. After months of delays, false starts, and intervention from lawmakers working to maintain and expand the spying powers of U.S. intelligence agencies, the House of Representatives on Friday extended Section 702 (PDF) of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for two years. It was decided that. . A bill to extend the program, which has been controversially abused by the government, passed in the House of Representatives by a vote of 273 to 147. The Senate has not yet passed its own bill.
Section 702 allows the U.S. government to wiretap communications between Americans and foreign nationals abroad. Hundreds of millions of phone calls, text messages, and emails are being intercepted by government spies, each with the “forced assistance” of U.S. communications providers. The government may harshly target foreigners believed to have “foreign intelligence information,” but it also eavesdrops on countless Americans' conversations each year. (The government claims it is impossible to determine how many Americans will be caught up in the program.) The government says the wiretapping is legal because Americans themselves are not being targeted. claims. Nevertheless, their calls, text messages, and emails can be stored by the government for years and later accessed by law enforcement without a judge's permission. The House bill also significantly expands the statutory definition of a communications service provider, which FISA experts, including Mark Zwillinger, one of the few who advise the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), We are publicly warning against this.
The FBI's track record of exploiting the program sparked an unusual détente last fall between progressive Democrats and pro-Trump Republicans, both of whom have targeted activists, journalists and sitting members of Congress. I was equally troubled by this. But in a major victory for the Biden administration, House lawmakers earlier in the day rejected an amendment that would impose new warrant requirements on federal agencies accessing data on 702 Americans. The warrant amendment was passed by the House Judiciary Committee earlier this year, but the committee's long-held jurisdiction over FISA has been challenged by friends of the intelligence community. A Brennan Center analysis this week found that 80 percent of the basic text of the FISA reauthorization bill was written by members of the Intelligence Committee.