Congress failed to extend a key surveillance law on Thursday night, according to a report by Politico. This effectively means that Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) will expire for the first time since 2008, as the House isn’t expected to vote again until June 23.
The House rejected a proposal that would’ve extended the law until July 2, on a 218-198 vote. The extension actually required a two-thirds majority, but didn’t even get a simple majority. Nearly 20 Republicans joined with Democrats to block the motion. A few hours later, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden blocked a couple of proposed extensions for the law in the Senate.
This law has been around nearly 20 years through multiple presidencies from both parties. So what’s the issue right now? There are some who don’t like it when the government engages in massive warrantless surveillance programs, sure, but that never stopped the law from being renewed before. Reporting indicates that Congress was close to a three-year extension, until President Trump announced he planned to install political ally Bill Pulte as director of national intelligence.
Democrats have raised concerns over Pulte’s appointment on the grounds that he has no intelligence experience and fears that he could use sensitive information gathered via Section 702 for political or personal purposes. Pulte regularly insinuated Fed board member Lisa Cook fired engaged in mortgage fraud, an allegation that has since been debunked; Cook was removed from her post by President Trump last August.
Trump has since nominated Jay Clayton, the top federal prosecutor in New York City, for the intelligence job. However, he has suggested that Pulte could take the job on an acting basis. “There needs to be a clear guarantee that Mr. Pulte will not serve as acting DNI,” Senator Mark Warner wrote in a statement.
As for Section 702, it lets the government conduct warrantless surveillance of foreign targets located outside of the United States. It also allows agencies like the NSA and the FBI to spy on Americans if the action is “reasonably likely” to collect information about foreign intelligence.
As one would expect, authorities have played fast and loose with that whole “reasonably likely” thing. Law enforcement agencies have been caught with their hands in the data cookie jar a lot since 2008. The surveillance-based FISA court found tens of thousands of improper database searches in 2017 and 2018 alone. A judge also ruled in 2019 that the FBI and NSA committed multiple violations of either the law or privacy-minded court orders when collecting data from phone and tech companies.
House Democrats are pushing for “meaningful reforms” of the law. “Section 702 is a critical foreign intelligence authority, but we cannot in good conscience vote for reauthorization without significant reforms to protect both national security and the constitutional privacy rights of Americans,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and other leaders said in a joint statement.
