This past weekend, a bill reauthorizing a contentious surveillance program under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was signed into law by President Biden. FISA’s Section 702 permits warrantless intelligence collecting on foreign targets, and it has been extended for a further two years. Although the communications of targets based outside of the US are the main emphasis, any correspondence with individuals within the US is also included, therefore documents belonging to Americans may also be included in these collections.
It was a close vote in the Senate to renew Section 702. It was supposed to expire on Friday at midnight, but according to The New York Times, an extension until April 2025 was recently granted to prevent it from expiring while discussions over suggested revisions continued. Additionally, the five-year extension period under Section 702 was reduced to two years. Despite missing the deadline on Friday, Congress managed to pass the bill with a vote of 60-34, according to CBS News. Shortly later, the White House declared that the president “will swiftly sign the bill into law.”
Section 702 was first signed into law in 2008 and has been renewed twice already, allowing US intelligence agencies to use data from internet and cell phone providers without a warrant to keep tabs on foreign targets’ communications. It’s faced strong opposition from both sides over its implications for Americans’ privacy. Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), called the passage of the bill “profoundly disappointing” in a statement released over the weekend, going on to say that it “gives the government more ways to secretly surveil us — with little power to hold spy agencies accountable.”
“Senators were aware of the threat this surveillance bill posed to our civil liberties and pushed it through anyway, promising they would attempt to address some of the most heinous expansions in the near future,” Hamadanchy said. “We plan to make sure these promises are kept.”
