- Section 702 is credited with helping intelligence officials thwart terrorist attacks on American soil, but it has also been prone to abuse by spying on American citizens.
- It allows the US to monitor foreign nationals who are not on US soil, even if the party on the other end of such communications is a US citizen in the United States.
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President Mike Johnson is making his proposal this week to his colleagues to extend the intelligence community’s warrantless surveillance authority.
A bill to revamp Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) with new safeguards for transparency is expected to reach the House floor this week, but it is far from clear whether will have broad Republican support.
Section 702 is credited with helping intelligence officials thwart terrorist attacks on American soil, but it has also been prone to abuse by spying on American citizens.
It allows the U.S. government to monitor foreign nationals with suspected terrorist ties who are not located on U.S. soil, even if the party on the other end of such communications is a U.S. citizen in the United States.
Hardliners on the right and left have become strange bedfellows over accusations that FISA has trampled Americans’ civil liberties.
President Mike Johnson is making his proposal this week to his colleagues to extend the intelligence community’s warrantless surveillance authority.
The Rules Committee is reviewing and advancing a version of a renewal bill on Tuesday.
The House-led bill released last week would expand the program while adding new changes aimed at strengthening oversight and training and ensuring program transparency.
It won’t include an amendment by Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, that prohibits federal agencies from buying information about Americans from private data companies, angering hardline conservatives, but leaders said that could get a separate vote. this week.
In March, a compromise bill crafted by Judiciary and Intelligence Committee negotiators was abruptly pulled from the House calendar over Intel Committee concerns about an amendment that would have forced authorities to seek a warrant. judicial before obtaining communications involving a US Citizen.
The provision requiring a court order was not in the bill released Friday, but could be voted on as an amendment during debate.
The coalition of progressives, privacy-conscious lawmakers and libertarian-leaning Republicans could oppose the amendment’s inclusion in the bill’s final text.
That coalition has seen its ranks rise after some high-profile missteps by the FBI, after agents were found to be questioning the communications of ex-partners, people involved in political activism and more.
Johnson warned in a letter to colleagues last week that if the House fails to once again pass a FISA renewal bill, the Senate could send a “clean” reauthorization without new privacy barriers. That would force the House to approve that or let the surveillance authority lapse.
Intelligence officials said they used FISA to thwart arms sales to Iran
A May 2023 report detailed how the FBI used Section 702 to ‘query’ (or search for) names of people suspected of being on Capitol grounds during the January 6, 2021 riots, Black Lives Matters protesters, victims of crime and their families and donors to a campaign for Congress.
In total, the FBI misused Section 702 more than 278,000 times, according to the document.
While many of the uses of Section 702 remain classified, intelligence officials leaked late last year that they had used the controversial tool to thwart arms sales to Iran.
The CIA and other intelligence agencies had used information gathered by monitoring the electronic communications of foreign weapons manufacturers and stopping several shipments of advanced weapons to Iran.