Senate passes reauthorization of key US surveillance program after midnight deadline

WASHINGTON — After a midnight deadline, the Senate voted early Saturday to reauthorize a major U.S. surveillance bill, after divisions over whether the FBI should be allowed to use the program to search for U.S. data nearly forced the statute to expire.

The legislation, which passed 60-34 with bipartisan support, would extend the program known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for two years. It now heads to President Joe Biden’s desk to become law. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden “will sign the bill quickly.”

“We are reauthorizing FISA just in the nick of time just before it expires at midnight,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said as voting on final passage began 15 minutes before the deadline. “All day long we persevered and persevered trying to make a breakthrough and in the end we succeeded.”

U.S. officials have said the surveillance tool, first authorized 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 U.S. has relied on for specific operations, such as the Assassination of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri in 2022.

“If you miss a key piece of intelligence, you could miss an event abroad or endanger troops,” said Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “You may miss a plot to harm the country. here, in your own country or somewhere else. So in this particular case there are implications for practice.”

The proposal would revamp the program, which allows the U.S. government to collect without warrants the communications of non-Americans outside the country to gather foreign intelligence. The reauthorization had a long and bumpy road to final passage Friday, after months of clashes between privacy advocates and national security hawks pushed the legislation’s consideration to the end of its validity.

Although the spy program was technically set to expire at midnight, the Biden administration had said it expected its intelligence-gathering authority to remain operational for at least another year, thanks to an opinion earlier this month from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees . applications.

Still, officials had said court approval should not be a substitute for congressional approval, especially because communications companies could stop working with the government if the program were to expire.

Before the law was set to expire, U.S. officials were already in turmoil after two major U.S. communications providers said they would stop following orders through the surveillance program, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations.

Attorney General Merrick Garland praised the reauthorization and reiterated how “indispensable” the tool is to the Department of Justice.

“This reauthorization of Section 702 authorizes the United States to continue collecting foreign intelligence information on non-U.S. persons located outside the United States, while codifying important reforms adopted by the Department of Justice to address to ensure protection for Americans. privacy and civil liberties,” Garland said in a statement Saturday.

But despite the Biden administration’s urging and secret briefings to senators this week on the crucial role they say the spy program plays in protecting national security, a group of progressive and conservative lawmakers calling for further changes had vetoed the version of the bill. that the House sent last week.

Lawmakers had demanded that Majority Leader Chuck Schumer allow votes on amendments to the legislation that would attempt to address what they see as civil liberties loopholes. Ultimately, Schumer was able to broker a deal that allowed critics to get basic votes on their amendments in exchange for speeding up the approval process.

The six amendments ultimately failed to gain the necessary support in the chamber to be included in the final passage.

One of the key changes proposed by opponents involved limiting the FBI’s access to information about Americans through the program. Although the surveillance tool only targets non-Americans in other countries, it also collects communications from Americans when they are in contact with the targeted foreigners. Senator Dick Durbin, the House’s No. 2 Democrat, had pushed a proposal that would require U.S. officials to obtain a warrant before gaining access to U.S. communications.

“If the government wants to spy on my private communications or the private communications of any American, they should seek the approval of a judge, just as our Founding Fathers intended when writing the Constitution,” Durbin said.

Over the past year, U.S. officials have exposed a series of abuses and mistakes by FBI analysts in inappropriately searching the intelligence repository for information about Americans or others in the U.S., including a member of Congress and participants in the protests against racial justice of 2020 and the January 6, 2021: riot at the US Capitol.

But members of both the House and Senate intelligence committees and the Justice Department warned that requiring a warrant would seriously hinder officials’ ability to quickly respond to looming national security threats.

“I think this is a risk we cannot afford to take given the wide variety of challenges our country faces around the world,” Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Friday .

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Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.