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 U.S. intelligence agencies' spying powers, the House of Representatives on Friday voted to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for two years. did.
A controversial bill to extend the program, which has been called an abuse by the government, passed the House 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), publicly warned against.
“Anti-reformers are not only rejecting common-sense reforms to FISA, they are pushing for a massive expansion of warrantless spying on Americans,” U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden told WIRED. Ta. “Their amendment would force cable men to become government spies and help monitor Americans' communications without a warrant.”
The FBI's track record of exploiting the program sparked a rare détente last fall between progressive Democrats and pro-Trump Republicans, both of whom have said the FBI has targeted activists, journalists and sitting members of Congress. I was similarly troubled. 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.
“Many of the members of Congress who wasted this vote have a long history of voting for this particular privacy protection,” said Sean Vitka, policy director at the civil liberties nonprofit Demand Progress. “That includes former Speaker Pelosi, Representative Lieu, and Representative Neguse.''
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.
“The data of 3 million Americans was searched in this information database,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. “The FBI didn't even follow its own rules when conducting this investigation. That's why we need a warrant.”
Rep. Mike Turner, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, campaigned for months with intelligence leaders to defeat the warrant amendment, costing the agency valuable time and threatening national security. He claimed that it would obstruct the investigation. The communications were collected legally and are already in the government's possession, Turner argued. No further approval is required to inspect them.