Critics of Government Surveillance Pan New Spy Powers Reform as ‘Toothless’

Critics of the broad powers given to federal agencies in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act are rallying against a new version of the bill that could be up for a vote as early as this week, but which critics say doesn’t fix problems with warrantless surveillance of Americans’ personal information — unless you’re a member of Congress.After punting the renewal of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Section 702, which was due by the end of last year but was extended to give legislators more time, members of the House unveiled their new bill Monday.At issue in the debate over the merits of the new bill are the sweeping powers that the section grants to agencies like the FBI — powers that were originally aimed at allowing the agencies to collect and search through communications between foreign nationals in order to keep tabs on foreign agents.Critics of the surveillance permission, though, say that this power has been abused by law enforcement agencies that have been found through myriad investigations and reports to have used the permissions granted in FISA Section 702 to collect and search through the communications of American citizens swept up in the mass data collection scheme.This happens because FISA permits agencies to collect data involving any foreign national, meaning communications between Americans and foreign nationals or communications that are routed through international entities are swept up in the mass collection.In one instance last year, it was found that the FBI used the permissions in the section to search through information on 133 civil rights protesters during the protests that erupted following the murder of George Floyd. These powers were also used by federal agencies to investigate ties between President Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Russian government.Proponents of the current version of FISA Section 702 say that the powers in the section are important for maintaining national security. The director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, expressed this view at a Senate Hearing in October.“Loss of this vital provision, or its reauthorization in a narrowed form, would raise profound risks,” Mr. Wray said. “For the FBI in particular, either outcome could mean substantially impairing, or in some cases entirely eliminating, our ability to find and disrupt many of the most serious security threats.”The new proposal is closer to the version of FISA Section 702 proposed by the more security-focused House Intelligence Committee last year, as opposed to the more privacy-centric House Judiciary Committee’s proposal. A key reform, which is excluded from the current bill, is a requirement that intelligence agencies obtain a warrant before searching through the databases of information collected on American citizens. As it stands today, the FBI does not need a warrant to perform such searches.The new proposal would, though, limit the number of individual agents who are allowed to search the database, making it easier for management to keep an eye on the agents.One eye-catching carveout in the bill is a provision that would require law enforcement agencies to “promptly notify” members of Congress if the FBI is using a search term that “is reasonably believed” to be targeting that lawmaker.Last year, Representative Darin LaHood, a Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee, said he had discovered that the FBI had put him under surveillance while his committee was reviewing the FISA matter.The new proposal was immediately panned by critics, both conservative and liberal, who argue that the changes aren’t enough to protect Americans’ privacy.A senior fellow for homeland security at the conservative Cato Institute, Patrick Eddington, tells the Sun, “The fingerprints of the FBI, NSA, and the ODNI are all over this ‘compromise’ FISA ‘reform’ bill.”“It continues to amaze me how [the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence] acts as the legislative and policy waterboy for the Intelligence Community, rather than being the overseer of it that it’s supposed to be,” he says. Mr. Eddington identified what he sees as two shortcomings in the new bill. First, he takes issue with the lack of a warrant requirement in the bill. Second, he says that lawmakers should add a provision banning the purchase of information from data brokers by federal agencies.“The only bill that will end those practices is the Biggs-Lofgren-Davidson bill, which is the one that should be up for House floor consideration,” Mr. Eddington says.The counsel for liberty and national security at the liberal Brennan Center, Noah Chauvin, called the bill “toothless” in a report on the new proposal.“The bill’s leading ‘reform’ is a prohibition on backdoor searches performed for the sole purpose of finding evidence of a crime,” Mr. Chauvin said. “As the bill’s drafters know, however, the FBI almost never labels its searches ‘evidence-of-a-crime only.’”According to Mr. Chauvin’s report, of the more than 204,000 backdoor searches conducted in 2022, just two of them were labeled as being for the sole purpose of finding evidence of a crime.

Critics of Government Surveillance Pan New Spy Powers Reform as ‘Toothless’

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