The Senate voted early Saturday to reauthorize a key U.S. surveillance law after a midnight deadline, after disagreements over whether the FBI should be restricted from using the program to search Americans’ data nearly forced its demise.
The legislation, which passed with bipartisan support 60-34, would extend the Section 702 program of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for two years. It now goes to President Joe Biden and becomes law. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden “will sign the bill quickly.”
“We are at a critical juncture to reauthorize FISA before it expires at midnight,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said as the vote on final passage began 15 minutes before the deadline. All day long, we kept pushing, holding on, trying to break through, and finally, we succeeded.”
U.S. officials say the surveillance tool, first authorized in 2008 and updated many times since, is critical to thwarting terrorist attacks, cyber intrusions and foreign espionage, and also provides intelligence that the U.S. relies on for specific operations. For example, in 2022, Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri was killed.
“If you miss a piece of critical intelligence, you could miss something overseas or put the military at risk,” said Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “You could miss something here, at home or Conspiracies elsewhere to harm the country. So in this particular case, there are real-life implications.”
The proposal would update a program that allows the U.S. government to collect the communications of non-Americans located abroad without a warrant for the purpose of gathering foreign intelligence. Friday’s reauthorization faces a long and bumpy road to final passage after months of clashes between privacy advocates and national security hawks pushed the legislation’s consideration to the brink of expiration.
Although the spy program is technically set to expire at midnight, the Biden administration has said it expects its intelligence-gathering powers to remain in place for at least another year due to an opinion issued earlier this month by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court under surveillance. app.
Officials said, however, that court approval should not supersede congressional authorization, especially since communications companies could stop working with the government if the program is allowed to lapse.
U.S. officials are already scrambling ahead of the law’s expiration after two major U.S. communications providers said they would stop using surveillance programs to comply with the order, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Attorney General Merrick Garland praised the reauthorization and reiterated how “indispensable” the tool is to the Department of Justice.
“The reauthorization of Section 702 gives the United States the authority to continue collecting foreign intelligence information about non-U.S. persons located outside the United States, while codifying important reforms the Department of Justice has adopted to ensure the protection of U.S. interests. Privacy and Civil Liberties ,” Garland said in a statement Saturday.
But even as the Biden administration urged senators this week and briefed them on the critical role the spy program plays in protecting national security, a group of progressive and conservative lawmakers agitating for further reform refused to accept the bill. The version of the House of Representatives was sent last week.
Lawmakers are asking Majority Leader Schumer to allow a vote on legislative amendments to address what they see as civil liberties loopholes in the bill. Eventually, Schumer struck a deal that allowed critics of his amendment to get a floor vote in exchange for expedited passage.
The six amendments ultimately failed to gain the necessary support and were included in the final paragraph.
One of the main changes proposed by critics would limit the FBI’s ability to obtain information about Americans through the program. While the surveillance tool only targets non-Americans in other countries, it also collects communications from Americans when they come into contact with targeted foreigners. Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 House Democrat, has been pushing a proposal that would require U.S. officials to obtain a search warrant before obtaining U.S. communications.
“If the government wants to spy on my private communications, or the private communications of any American, they should get a judge’s approval, just as our Founding Fathers intended when they wrote the Constitution,” Durbin said.
Last year, U.S. officials revealed a series of abuses and mistakes made by FBI analysts when they improperly queried intelligence libraries for information about Americans or others in the United States, including a member of Congress and a 2020 racial activist. Justice protests and the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
But members of the House and Senate intelligence committees and the Justice Department warned that requiring search warrants would severely hinder officials from responding quickly to imminent national security threats.
“I don’t think we can afford to take that risk given the tremendous challenges our country faces around the world,” Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on Friday.
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