The House voted to extend the US spy program

FISA: An Act of Congress to Reinvent and Protect Against State-Defeasing Insights from the American Civil Liberties Union

The bill doesn’t rein in surveillance, but it expands it. The American Civil Liberties Union has had four years of abuses, and the bill we received doesn’t change things at all. Foreign intelligence has a potential to be used in other ways if you expand its definition.

The FBI’s track record of abusing the program kicked off a rare détente last fall between progressive Democrats and pro-Trump Republicans—both bothered equally by the FBI’s targeting of activists, journalists, and a sitting member of Congress. An amendment that would have required federal agencies to get a warrant before accessing Americans’ data was shot down by the House earlier in the day.

The amendment was not about inboxes and outboxes. This amendment is not about Americans’ data. This amendment is about Hezbollah’s data, Hamas’s data, and the Chinese communist party’s data,” said Rep. Michael Turner (R-OH). They will increase the number of terrorist attacks in the United States, and we will go blind because of it.

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.

The two-year extension in the latest version of the bill is what congressman Matt Gaetz said they just bought President Trump. The previous version of this bill would have been extended beyond the Trump presidency. Now President Trump gets an at bat to fix the system that victimized him more than any other American.”

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 WAS ILLEGALLY USED against me and many other people. They showed up on my campaign. he posted.

The House had unexpected alliances over privacy issues during the debate over the bill. 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 212–212.

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 FISA Amendment: A Critical Review of the House Judiciary Commission’s Role in Protecting Privacy Against Intrusion and Threat Threats

According to the policy director at the civil-liberties-focused nonprofit Demand Progress, a number of members who tanked this vote have long histories of voting for this particular privacy protection.

The government can target foreigners with foreign intelligence information, but also listen in to the conversations of Americans. (The government claims it is impossible to determine how many Americans get swept up by the program.) The government believes that the wiretaps are legal because Americans aren’t being targeted. Nevertheless, their calls, texts, and emails may be stored by the government for years, and can later be accessed by law enforcement without a judge’s permission.

The program was extended by the House in a 273–147 vote. The Senate has yet to pass its own bill.

Friends of the intelligence community challenged the House Judiciary Committee’s jurisdiction with the warrant amendment, which was passed earlier this year. Analysis by the Brennan Center this week found that 80 percent of the base text of the FISA reauthorization bill had been authored by intelligence committee members.