April 17 (UPI) — Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives backed a temporary extension of a controversial clause of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act early on Friday.
The chamber passed a bill to extend the law on “warrantless surveillance” of foreign nationals through April 30 by unanimous consent in order to prevent it from expiring on Monday.
Members waived through the stopgap measure for Section 702 of FISA after two earlier votes to authorize the legislation for another five years or 18 months were defeated, with the support of some Republicans who wanted more privacy safeguards built into the law.
The bill still has to be adopted by the U.S. Senate when senators return to Capitol Hill on Monday.
The extension buys time for negotiations on an issue that has had the GOP leadership tied in knots for weeks amid resistance from lawmakers from both sides of the aisle pushing for reform of the practice introduced in 2008 amid the fallout from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Section 702 permits U.S. intelligence agencies to intercept the electronic communications of foreign nationals in other countries without a warrant. The calls, texts and emails of some 350,000 of these people who are in communication with Americans are gathered up in the dragnet surveillance and subject to scrutiny by the federal government.
U.S. telecom and tech giants such as AT&T and Google can be made to hand over the phone records and emails of these overseas targets to the National Security Agency.
Libertarian-minded lawmakers who believe the practice infringes privacy rights have been fighting since its inception to require law enforcement or intelligence agencies to get a warrant from a court before they can view the information of American citizens caught up in the surveillance trawl.
Proponents in the intelligence community argue that would make Section 702 less effective, to the detriment of national security.
Now, pro-privacy and civil liberties lawmakers from both parties have joined forces to place limits on the practice, while their centrist and hawkish colleagues are doing the opposite, working to get the extension through without any modification.
Efforts by U.S. President Trump to get the extension passed without any changes have also fallen on deaf ears among conservative Republicans linked to the House Freedom Caucus, despite them supporting him on virtually everything else.
The collection of intelligence would likely continue even if Congress does not reauthorize it but could face legal action from tech and telecoms providers compelled to turn over the communications caches to the government.
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