Trump Allies Are Giddy About House Intelligence Committee's Surveillance Bill
In an eleventh-hour effort to preserve and expand the federal government's warrantless surveillance powers, the House Intelligence Committee advanced a bill last week that has the full-throated support of Donald Trump's senior law enforcement appointees. The bill, which has been described by civil liberties advocates as the largest expansion of domestic government surveillance since the Patriot Act," would increase federal surveillance agencies' access to the communications of U.S. citizens with almost no federal oversight or restrictions.
The federal government's domestic spying powers come from Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which was revamped after 9/11 to create mass data collection powers, has been routinely abused and manipulated, and is set to expire at the end of this year. While the bill's sponsors - including House Intelligence Committee chair Rep. Mike Turner and ranking Democratic Rep. Jim Himes - have described the bill as a reform," it contains a provision that would widen the scope of companies required to surrender information to investigators without a warrant.
A number of hawks who held key intelligence posts in the Trump administration are gunning for its passage. The push comes as President Joe Biden continues to fall in the polls, while Trump renews his desire to wield totalitarian powers. I want to be a dictator for one day," he recently said. You know why I wanted to be a dictator? Because I want a wall, and I want to drill, drill, drill."
Civil rights experts warn that the sweeping powers of the Intelligence Committee's bill would be a danger under any presidential administration, and a particular threat should Trump win the 2024 election. Jim Himes appears to be desperately throwing a Patriot Act-like expansion of warrantless surveillance into the hands of Donald Trump," Sean Vitka, policy director at Demand Progress, told The Intercept. It's beyond unacceptable and must be called out."
According to Wired, the Intelligence Committee bill is being quietly supported by the White House and senior intelligence community officials.
The House Judiciary Committee, meanwhile, free from the influence wielded by spy agencies over the Intelligence Committee, has advanced a competing piece of legislation, which would defang the 702 authority by forcing government officials to obtain warrants prior to its use, in addition to a number of other reforms that would inhibit warrantless data collection. In Congress, the bill is supported by members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus as well as the right-wing Freedom Caucus. It's also backed by civil liberties advocates including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union.
On Tuesday, the House is likely to vote on the Section 702 legislation through a process known as Queen of the Hill. The unusual parliamentary procedure would put the two competing bills up for a floor vote, with a simple winner-takes-all majority needed to secure passage. Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., did not respond to The Intercept's request for comment about his position on the dueling reauthorization efforts.
Congress will also be voting this week on the National Defense Authorization Act, a must-pass bill that contains a provision extending the702 authority in its current form until April.
Section 702 allows the U.S. government to gather the communications of non-U.S. citizens abroad, but in practice, it allows the government to surveilAmericans who are in touch with foreign nationals as well. The authority has been used to conduct thousands of backdoor" searches on U.S. citizens, including elected officials and activists. The spying power grants the government the ability to force telecommunications providers to hand over information on its targets. The language in the Intelligence Committee bill would expand the definition of entities that must comply with requests under 702, making it such that almost any company or organization involved in communications would have to surrender information to investigators without a warrant.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., has described it as a Patriot Act 2.0."Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center, said that the House Intelligence Committee's bill would have devastating consequences for everyday Americans. Hotels, libraries, coffee shops, and other places that offer wifi to their customers could be forced to serve as surrogate spies. They could be required to configure their systems to ensure that they can provide the government access to entire streams of communications," she tweeted. Even a repair person who comes to fix the wifi in your home would meet the revised definition: that person is an 'employee' of a service provider' who has access' to equipment' (your router) on which communications are transmitted."
Turner, the chair of the Intelligence Committee, recently touted the backing of Trump allies who served in the CIA, Department of Justice, and other intelligence community posts. In a letter to the House speaker last week, Mike Pompeo, William Barr, John Ratcliffe, Robert O'Brien, and Devin Nunes nodded to the importance of reforming FISA, praising marginal changes like congressional oversight of the FISA court while dismissing the push for a warrant requirement.
In addition to a warrant requirement, the Judiciary Committee bill, sponsored by Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., addresses another method for warrantless data collection long practiced by the Department of Justice and intelligence community. It would close a loophole that allows the government to circumvent a ban on buying private data directly from companies and instead using third-party brokers to buy the same data from an indirect source.
Biggs, a member of the Freedom Caucus, joined with Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and other lawmakers calling on Democratic and Republican leaders in both chambers to support his bill. The intelligence community is attacking our Fourth Amendment privacy rights. Rogue actors continue to abuse FISA Section 702 to improperly spy on American citizens, and it is far past time for the practice to come to an end. The Fourth Amendment guarantees Americans a reasonable expectation of privacy, and the government should never be given the opportunity to skirt the supreme Law of the Land," Biggs wrote in a press release accompanying a letter to congressional leaders.
Jayapal, for her part, said that the law should be overhauled to protect Americans' constitutional rights and their sensitive data, Section 702 reauthorization should be subject to strong scrutiny and debate and cannot be included in larger, must-pass legislation," she wrote. Congress must work to stop the government from warrantlessly spying on Americans."
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