Current Events > House votes to reauthorize controversial surveillance program

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https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/12/24128600/fisa-section-702-house-votes-to-reauthorize-warrant-requirement

After three failed attempts and a heated floor debate, the House voted on Friday to reauthorize a controversial program that lets US intelligence agencies spy on foreign communications without a warrant. The bill ultimately passed 273147.

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is scheduled by statute to expire on April 19th, though the FISA court recently granted a government request that would have authorized the program for another year without congressional approval.

The battle over the amendments to the bill revealed some unexpected alliances in the House over privacy issues. A bipartisan coalition of progressives and members of the far-right Freedom Caucus rallied together behind an amendment to impose a warrant requirement for surveillance of Americans, but was narrowly defeated 212212.

Securing enough House votes to reauthorize FISA has been an uphill battle for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). The speaker had failed to move the bill forward twice already when former president Donald Trump inserted himself into the discourse on Tuesday by railing against FISA on Truth Social. KILL FISA, IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHERS. THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN!!! he posted.

On Wednesday, the House voted against debating the FISA reauthorization bill, blocking the path for a floor vote making it a third failure for the speaker. That version of the bill, which was released on April 5th, lacked an amendment requiring a warrant to search Americans data. It did, however, include resolutions denouncing the Biden administrations immigration policies and opposing efforts to place one-sided pressure on Israel with respect to Gaza. Nineteen Republicans joined Democrats in voting against debating the bill at all. To sway the recalcitrant members of his party, Johnson put forth a new version of the bill that reauthorized Section 702 for two years instead of five.

We just bought President Trump an at bat, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) told NBC News, referring to the two-year extension in the latest version of the bill. The previous version of this bill would have kicked reauthorization beyond the Trump presidency. Now President Trump gets an at bat to fix the system that victimized him more than any other American.

In addition to shortening the extension to two years, the Republican holdouts once again pushed for a bipartisan amendment that would require intelligence officers to obtain a warrant before accessing Americans data.
We are actually debating if a warrant should be required for government surveillance agencies to spy on Americans, Rep. Keith Self (R-TX) said in a debate on the House floor. Rep Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) said the lack of a warrant requirement had enabled surveillance agencies to use Section 702 as a domestic spy tool, while Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ) said the authority had been used in millions of improper searches, allowing intelligence officers to spy on a range of domestic targets, from ex-girlfriends to journalists.

National security hawks, meanwhile, characterized the warrant requirement as a risk to the country.

This amendment is not about Americans inboxes and outboxes. This amendment is not about Americans data. This amendment is about Hezbollahs data, Hamass data, and the Chinese communist partys data, said Rep. Michael Turner (R-OH). This is dangerous, it will make us go blind, and it will absolutely increase their recruitment of people inside the United States not even American citizens to do terrorist attacks and harm Americans.
The warrant requirement amendment narrowly failed to pass, with 212 members voting for it and 212 voting against.

A separate amendment introduced by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), which requires the FBI to report the number of Americans its spying on, passed, as did an amendment introduced by Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) that updates the definition of foreign intelligence to help target foreign narcotics trafficking. (More than 90 percent of the fentanyl seized by Customs and Border Protection is smuggled through official border crossings by US citizens.) In a statement to Politico, CIA director Bill Burns said Section 702 has been vital to the agencys disruption of fentanyl shipments to the US.

The thing about this bill it doesnt rein in surveillance, it actually expands it. Weve had four years of abuses, and what we got instead of a bill that reforms things is a bill with provisions that actually expands warrantless surveillance, Kia Hamadanchy, senior federal policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, told The Verge. Whenever you expand the definition of foreign intelligence, it always has potential to be used in unintended ways.
The Senate still needs to vote on the reauthorization ahead of the April 19th deadline.

In a statement, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) decried the House vote. The House bill represents one of the most dramatic and terrifying expansions of government surveillance authority in history, Wyden said. It allows the government to force any American who installs, maintains, or repairs anything that transmits or stores communications to spy on the governments behalf. That means anyone with access to a server, a wire, a cable box, a wifi router, or a phone. It would be secret: the Americans receiving the government directives would be bound to silence, and there would be no court oversight. I will do everything in my power to stop this bill.

Antifar posted...

We just bought President Trump an at bat, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) told NBC News, referring to the two-year extension in the latest version of the bill. The previous version of this bill would have kicked reauthorization beyond the Trump presidency. Now President Trump gets an at bat to fix the system that victimized him more than any other American.

Go fuck yourself, Matt.

Specifically yourself, leave the teenagers you sex traffick out of it.

DrizztLink posted...

Go fuck yourself, Matt.

Specifically yourself, leave the teenagers you sex traffick out of it.

Your objection to the person himself is not important here. What is important is that these bills are getting harder to pass and are facing the prospect of some reform. The shortening of time before it needs to be authorized again is great. It's unconstitutional and needs reform badly, enough that there is significant bipartisan push back. Not enough to stop it, but it is something. We can only hope the Senate ends up requiring even more reform before passage.

Most of the people in Congress suck. It's important to focus on the issues at hand.

How many GOP members will be found to be speaking with Russians due to this?

Cheater87 posted...

How many GOP members will be found to be speaking with Russians due to this?

Won't matter in the slightest when Trump wins.

Controversial? How so? First time I've heard of this bill being contested like this.

This is a great example of the security state being incredibly difficult to dismantle and incredibly resilient against meaningful change.

In the post Nixon era, the FISA system was supposed to be an improvement over the previous wild west system that was blatantly illegal and anti democratic. Instead, it's an entirely rubber stamped procedure where people's rights can be violated behind closed doors as long as law enforcement, military, or spy officials can type the words "national security" without typos. And it gives that process of violating people's rights a veneer of legitimacy and legality.

rideshort posted...

Controversial? How so? First time I've heard of this bill being contested like this.

It's "controversial" because one political party is engaged in extensive communications with Russian spies.

darkmaian23 posted...

Your objection to the person himself is not important here.

My dude, I am going to object to the fucking sex trafficker who thinks he's people every chance I get

I assumed they already did this.

Domestically, too.

RetuenOfDevsman posted...

I assumed they already did this.

Domestically, too.

yes this is an extension of something that has been in place for decades

Its only controversial to other traitors like Donald Trump.

Cheater87 posted...

How many GOP members will be found to be speaking with Russians due to this?

At the very least all the ones who went to Russia a few years back.

divot1338 posted...

Its only controversial to other traitors like Donald Trump.

It's controversial to the ACLU and Democratic elected officials quoted in the article.

I dont think people understand this is renewing the patriot act, which was always controversial

Antifar posted...

It's controversial to the ACLU and Democratic elected officials quoted in the article.

Man you do not understand whats happening do you?

Holy_Cloud105 posted...

Won't matter in the slightest when Trump wins.

He's not going to win, lmao.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/2/27be86ae.jpg

divot1338 posted...

Man you do not understand whats happening do you?

What do you think is happening, exactly?

Red_XIV posted...

It's "controversial" because one political party is engaged in extensive communications with Russian spies.

divot1338 posted...

Its only controversial to other traitors like Donald Trump.

You do know that there are legitimate criticisms of the legislation, right?

https://www.aclu.org/documents/why-fisa-amendments-act-unconstitutional

There are no real limits on how the government uses, retains, or disseminates the information that it collects. The law is silent about what the government can keep and what it has to get rid of. It fails to place real limits on how information can be disseminated and to whom. This means the government can create huge databases that contain information about U.S. persons obtained without warrants and then search these databases at a later point.

The law does not limit government surveillance to communications relating to terrorism. Journalists, human rights researchers, academics, and attorneys routinely exchange information by telephone and e-mail that relates to the foreign affairs of the U.S. (Think, for example, of a journalist who is researching the surge in Iraq, or of an academic who is writing about the policies of the Chvez government in Venezuela, or of an attorney who is negotiating the repatriation of a prisoner held at Guantnamo Bay.) The Bush administration has argued that the new law is necessary to address the threat of terrorism, but the truth is that the law sweeps much more broadly and implicates all kinds of communications that have nothing to do with terrorism or criminal activity of any kind.

To think that the legislation would only be used against Russian spies is as hilarious as thinking the Patriot Act only applies to terrorists.

And the seventeen Republicans Donald Trump convinced to flip dont have legitimate criticisms of the legislation. Theyre doing it because he said so and he said so because thats how he got busted during the 2016 election.

Sheila Jackson Lee has been voting against it for almost 23 years. She has a valid criticism of the legislation.

And to be completely transparent here this legislation is needed to monitor the behavior of countries like Russia and China who seek to undermine our elections.

Fenris.

Obama still watching me pee huh?

The Senate is set to vote on it soon:
https://www.wired.com/story/senate-section-702-ecsr-provision/

Some of the nation's top legal experts on a controversial US spy program argue that the legislation, known as the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act (RISAA), would enhance the US government's spy powers, forcing a variety of new businesses to secretly eavesdrop on Americans' overseas calls, texts, and email messages. Those experts include a handful of attorneys who've had the rare opportunity to appear before the US government's secret surveillance court.

The Section 702 program, authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, was established more than a decade ago to legalize the government's practice of forcing major telecommunications companies to eavesdrop on overseas calls in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. On the one hand, the government claims that the program is designed to exclusively target foreign citizens who are physically located abroad; on the other, the government has fiercely defended its ability to access wiretaps of Americans' emails and phone conversations, often years after the fact and in cases unrelated to the reasons the wiretaps were ordered in the first place.

The 702 program works by compelling the cooperation of US businesses defined by the government as "electronic communications service providers" -- traditionally phone and email providers such as AT&T and Google. Members of the House Intelligence Committee, whose leaders today largely serve as lobbyists for the US intelligence community in Congress, have been working to expand the definition of that term, enabling the government to force new categories of businesses to eavesdrop on the government's behalf.

And some fun fearmongering:

Members of the House Intelligence Community allied with the Biden White House and its spy agencies to defeat the amendment in what multiple House sources referred to as a campaign of fear. An hour before the vote on Friday, Himes openly threatened US lawmakers supporting the warrant requirement, claiming that if it passed, hed ensure those lawmakers face the brunt of the blame in the wake of any future terrorist attacks.
If we turn off the ability of the government to query US person data, the consequences will be known soon, Himes said. And we will audit why what happened happened. And accountability will be visited.

For people saying this is all Republicans, Democrats also oppose it, including Ron Wyden, who is one of the few senators who consistently seems to understand tech issues.

I'm going to bump this just once in case anybody cares. Supposedly, the Senate will be voting on this shit bill tomorrow.