President Joe Biden signed a bill that reauthorizes a key surveillance authority after the Senate passed the legislation late Friday night.
The bill reauthorized section 702 of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a powerful electronic surveillance tool widely used by American intelligence agencies abroad, but criticized by civil liberties organizations.
Senators voted 60-34 for the new version of bill which was put forward for a two-year reauthorization instead of five years.
The program authorize US intelligence agencies to conduct electronic surveillance and sweep up communications including phone calls and emails of non-Americans outside US territory. It also includes communications from US citizens to foreigners targeted for monitoring.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan applauded the reauthorization, calling the program “one of the United States’ most vital intelligence collection tools.”
Former president Donald Trump also got involved in the negotiations by urging lawmakers last week to “Kill FISA.”
“It was illegally used against me, and many others. They spied on my campaign!!!” Trump wrote, without proof, on his Truth Social platform earlier this month.
Under FISA’s Section 702, the government hoovers up massive amounts of internet and cell phone data on foreign targets. Hundreds of thousands of Americans’ information is incidentally collected during that process and then accessed each year without a warrant — down from millions of such queries the US government ran in past years. Critics refer to these queries as “backdoor” searches.
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Saturday praised the bill’s passage, saying it will help keep the country safe.
“This reauthorization of Section 702 gives the United States the authority to continue to collect foreign intelligence information about non-U.S. persons located outside the United States, while at the same time codifying important reforms the Justice Department has adopted to ensure the protection of Americans’ privacy and civil liberties,” Garland said.
A senior White House official in December urged Congress to renew the program, saying that with the ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine, and amid high tensions with China and a persistent threat of cyber attacks, it would be a dangerous time for “unilateral” disarmament.
