Sweeping Federal Surveillance Powers Could Expire Amid Civil Liberties Debate in Congress

With an end-of-December deadline looming for the renewal of legislation that grants broad surveillance power to federal intelligence agencies, Speaker Johnson is hoping to push the deadline into February and join the measure with an annual defense bill, a move being met with backlash in Congress.First reported by Politico, Mr. Johnson told Republican senators Wednesday that he wanted to extend the deadline to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act into February and link it to a broader annual defense authorization bill.A senior analyst on homeland security and civil liberties at the Cato Institute, Patrick Eddington, confirmed the reporting for the Sun and characterized the tactic as a “high-risk maneuver.” It will only take a few Republicans voting against the bill in order to sink the extension.This move immediately sparked backlash, with some 50 members of Congress signing a letter opposing Mr. Johnson’s proposal. Senator Lee said in a tweet that he would rather let FISA Section 702 expire than pass it “absent massive reforms.”“We desperately need the Fourth Amendment right now. It’s been overlooked, trampled on,” Mr. Lee said at a press conference. “Anytime you authorize the government to collect info on Americans without a warrant, and allow them to search those databases and contents of phone calls without a warrant, you’ve got a problem.”Congressman Ben Cline also indicated that he would oppose an extension due to the fact that intelligence services have “abused the FISA process and spied on Americans.”“With Section 702 of FISA up for renewal this year, a clean reauthorization or extension will only further erode Americans’ lost confidence in their Intel agencies,” Mr. Cline said.Congressman Chip Roy told Politico that he doesn’t think the tactic of linking the Section 702 renewal to the defense authorization bill from Mr. Johnson will work.“Oh my God, FISA is expiring, we’re going to kill everybody in the world because FISA expired,” Mr. Roy said to Politico sarcastically. The renewal of Section 702 has become a hot button-issue, with both Republicans and Democrats taking issue with the sweeping surveillance powers the section gives agencies like the FBI.The provision allows law enforcement agencies to collect information on communications among foreign nationals. Although proponents of the provision say it does not allow for spying on American citizens, critics say it is ripe for abuse, with myriad reports and investigations finding that law enforcement has used the section to conduct warrantless searches of Americans’ communications.This past spring, it was disclosed that the FBI used Section 702 to search for information on 133 Americans involved in civil rights protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. The section also enabled federal agencies to covertly investigate ties between President Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Russian government.Some, like a former assistant secretary for Homeland Security under President George W. Bush, Stewart Baker, argue that the section provides the framework for intelligence operations that cannot be easily replaced and that there is a way to renew the section in a fashion compliant with the Constitution.“Something like 50, 60 percent of the President’s Daily Brief has intelligence in it that comes from 702,” Mr. Baker said at a recent panel at the Council on Foreign Relations. “There is no good substitute for that program.” The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Congressman Darin LaHood, has attempted to push a version of the section that he says remedies the issues with the bill.“Our role is to scrutinize, to fix, to reform, to revise,” Mr. LaHood said at the same panel. “And I think the product that the Intelligence Committee on the House side has come up with has done exactly that under Chairman Turner’s leadership.”Some critics, like Mr. Lee, argue that reforms to Section 702 are not enough. Mr. Lee, alongside Senator Wyden, proposed the Government Surveillance Reform Act earlier this month, which is aimed at protecting Americans from warrantless searches, among other provisions. “Americans know that it is possible to confront our country’s adversaries ferociously without throwing our constitutional rights in the trash can,” Mr. Wyden said in a statement. “But for too long surveillance laws have not kept up with changing times.”

Sweeping Federal Surveillance Powers Could Expire Amid Civil Liberties Debate in Congress

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