WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives will consider a bill next week that would reauthorize a surveillance program that U.S. officials consider critical to national security but that critics say raises privacy concerns.
The action comes shortly before the program known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act expires on April 19. It was due for reauthorization last year, but instead a short-term extension was granted as part of a major defense policy bill passed by the House of Representatives. in December.
While the prospect of passage is uncertain because of messy political alliances and deep opposition from civil liberties advocates, senior administration officials said in a call with reporters Friday that they believed the bill preserved the most critical aspects of the spy program while including guardrails that do not undermine its purpose and effectiveness.
Section 702 allows the U.S. government to collect without a warrant the communications of non-Americans located outside the country for the purpose of gathering foreign intelligence.
US officials have said the tool, first approved in 2008 and renewed several times since, is crucial in disrupting terror attacks, cyber intrusions and foreign espionage and has also provided intelligence that the US has relied on for specific operations, such as the massacre in 2002. by al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri.
But the administration’s efforts to secure the program’s reauthorization have been met with fierce and bipartisan opposition, with Democrats like Sen. Ron Wyden having long championed civil liberties and joining Republican supporters of former President Donald Trump to demand better privacy protections for Americans and propose a slew of competing bills.
A specific concern for lawmakers concerns the FBI’s access to information about Americans through the program. Although the surveillance program only targets non-Americans in other countries, it also collects communications from Americans when they are in contact with the targeted foreigners.
Over the past year, US officials have exposed a series of abuses and errors by FBI analysts in improperly searching the intelligence repository for information about Americans or others in the US, including a member of Congress and participants in the protests against racial justice of 2020 and the January 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
The bill being considered Tuesday would require approval from an FBI attorney to search databases on Americans and others in the U.S.; mandatory auditing of all such searches; and restrictions on searches solely for the purpose of finding evidence of criminal activity, as opposed to foreign intelligence purposes.
Administration officials say they are prepared to introduce an amendment that would require a warrant to review the results of questions about an American, which the administration opposes.