Lawmakers passed legislation early Saturday reauthorizing and expanding a controversial U.S. surveillance law shortly after the powers expired at midnight, shrugging off opposition from privacy advocates and lawmakers.
The bill, which passed by a vote of 60-34, reauthorizes powers known as Section 702 under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows the government to collect the communications of foreign individuals with access to records from technology and phone providers. Critics, including lawmakers who voted against the reauthorization, say FISA also scans Americans’ communications while spying on foreign targets.
White House officials and intelligence chiefs have rallied behind efforts to reauthorize FISA, arguing that the law prevents terrorism and cyberattacks and that removing the powers would harm the U.S. government’s ability to gather information. The Biden administration claims the majority of classified information in the president’s daily briefing comes from the Section 702 program.
Privacy advocates and rights groups rejected the FISA reauthorization, which does not require the FBI or NSA to obtain a warrant before searching the Section 702 database of Americans’ communications. Accusations that the FBI and NSA abused their power to conduct warrantless searches of Americans’ communications a key challenge for some Republicans initially seeking greater privacy.
The bipartisan efforts were aimed at requiring the government to obtain a warrant before searching its databases for Americans’ communications. But those failed before a final vote in the Senate.
After the passage in the early hours of today, Senator Mark Warner, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that FISA is “necessary” for the US intelligence community.
The bill now goes to the President’s desk, where it is almost certain to become law.
FISA became law in 1978 before the advent of the modern Internet. It began to come under increased public scrutiny in 2013 after a massive leak of classified documents revealed the US government’s global wiretapping program under FISA, which implicated many major US technology companies and phone companies as unwilling participants.
The Senate was widely expected to pass the surveillance bill into law, but faced fresh opposition after the House last week approved a version of the legislation that critics said would expand FISA’s reach to include smaller companies and providers. telecommunications not previously subject to the Surveillance Act.
Communications providers largely opposite The House’s expanded definition of “electronic communications service provider,” which it said would inadvertently include companies beyond the big tech companies and telecom providers already required to hand over user data.
An amendment introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden to remove the expanded measure from the bill did not pass for a vote.
Wyden, a Democratic privacy hawk and member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused senators of waiting “until the 11th hour to move to renew overnight warrantless surveillance.”
“Time after time anti-reformers pledge that their changes to the law will curb abuses, and yet each time, the public learns of new abuses by officials who face little meaningful oversight,” Wyden said. in a statement.
The bill finally passed shortly after midnight.
Despite the last-minute rush to pass the bill, a key provision in FISA prevents the government’s Section 702 programs from being shut down suddenly if statutory powers expire. FISA requires the government to seek annual certification from the secretive FISA Court, which oversees and approves government surveillance programs. The FISA Court last certified the government’s surveillance program under Section 702 in early April, allowing the government to use its existing power that has expired until at least April 2025.
FISA will now expire at the end of 2026, creating a similar legislative showdown in the middle of the next US administration.
