House votes to renew NSA spying, rejects reform push
House votes to renew NSA spying, rejects reform push
BY KATIE BO WILLIAMS - 01/11/18 11:18 AM EST
In a victory for the Trump administration, the House on
Thursday approved legislation to renew government surveillance powers while
voting down new limits on how authorities can use the information that is
collected.
Just a few hours before the vote, President Trump roiled
the waters by sending out a tweet that appeared to contradict his own
administration’s opposition to the changes, which were offered by Rep. Justin
Amash (R-Mich.).
That amendment failed by a vote of 233-183.
“ 'House votes on controversial FISA ACT today.' This is
the act that may have been used, with the help of the discredited and phony
Dossier, to so badly surveil and abuse the Trump Campaign by the previous
administration and others?” Trump tweeted.
The White House had said it supported the underlying
surveillance bill but strongly opposed Amash’s amendment.
Trump later clarified that he “has personally directed
the fix to the unmasking process since taking office and today’s vote is about
foreign surveillance of foreign bad guys on foreign land.”
After rejecting Amash’s amendment, the House passed an
underlying bill backed by members of the House Intelligence and Judiciary
committees that renewed the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program with just a
few small changes.
The bill, passed by a vote of 256-164, now heads to the
Senate, which is expected to swiftly take up and pass the measure before the
surveillance program expires on Jan. 19.
At issue is a law passed in 2008 — known as Section 702
of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) — that allows the NSA to
collect texts and emails of foreigners abroad without an individualized
warrant, even when they communicate with Americans in the U.S.
Throughout the fall, privacy advocates on Capitol Hill
pushed for changes to the law that critics say are necessary to ensure Fourth
Amendment protections for people swept up in surveillance. The push seemed to
gain some momentum even over the objections of the Trump administration.
The intelligence community sees the law as one of its top
tools to identify and disrupt terror plots and even amongst reform advocates,
there is no appetite to see the program lapse entirely.
But House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) has
long said a clean reauthorization of Section 702, without any changes, would
not pass the House, where the powerful Freedom Caucus has banded together with
privacy-minded Democrats to advocate for tighter restrictions on how government
investigators can use data gathered under the program.
The issue was catapulted onto the front page amidst the
controversy over “unmasking.” Republicans have long speculated that former
national security adviser Michael Flynn was caught up in 702 surveillance and
inappropriately unmasked by Obama administration officials.
That process, surveillance experts say, is not directly
related to congressionally dictated 702 authorities — it’s governed by
administration regulations.
“There are FISA issues swirling around that have
absolutely nothing to do with 702,” Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas) said before the
vote. “Those are being used by opponents, those who want it to go dark, in a
perfectly legitimate debate technique to try to muddy the waters.”
Updated at 11:56 a.m.
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