Panicked Republicans considered pulling the bill because they thought the president was against it.
Advertisement
The new law is now heading to the U.S. Senate, but as few senators have historically deviated from the House’s stance on spy laws, the House vote was critical for the law’s passage. He was referring to Obama administration officials wantonly “unmasking” the identities of Trump campaign officials in intelligence reports, which had nothing to do with 702 surveillance. First, he announced the sale of non-existent planes to the public and now, he apparently come out in opposition to a bill his administration is trying to push with regards to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The law as now written allows the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the communications of foreigners outside our country, as long as that monitoring doesn’t target Americans (citizen or resident alien) or anyone physically inside this country. As for Africa, he asked why more people from “shithole countries” should be allowed into the US, the sources said. Because of that, it’s hard not to unintentionally collect information from or about United States citizens and residents.
“What this essentially means is every year, thousands of times you have the government search for the communications of Americans in [Section] 702 databases, and we think this is an end-run on the Constitution”. If agencies use the databases to target Americans suspected of terrorist connections, they must obtain FISA-court warrants based on probable cause.
Given the proper authority and power to do so, such as expanding the jurisdiction of FISA Warrants, law enforcement officials could practically arrest anyone they want, whenever they wanted, for nearly anything they wanted. The law’s secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which issues blanket and specific warrants and monitors government compliance with the law, is comprised of sitting federal judges who serve on a rotating basis. No American should have their right to privacy taken away.
Only Section 702 of the act was up for a vote on Thursday.
The Prism program collects communications from internet services directly.
However, fellow California Democrat Zoe Lofgren, who backed the defeated proposal, warned the government was gathering “the content of your phone calls, content of your emails, content of your text messages, video messages”, and searching them “for crimes that have nothing to do with terrorism”.
Advertisement
Some conservative, libertarian-leaning Republicans and liberal Democrats attempted to persuade colleagues to include more privacy protections. In an earlier vote, lawmakers turned down a move to put limits on warrantless spying that critics say has swept up emails, photos and text messages of an untold number of USA citizens. On October 23, Hayden and 15 othernational security professionals – including former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper – signed a letter to congressional leaders urging them to reauthorize the email-collection provision. “Section 702 has been instrumental in preventing attacks on the homeland and removing terrorists from the battlefield”, the letter said. Most of us are OK with that. The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 saw the addition of Section 702, which authorized the United States Attorney General and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to work together and conduct warrantless surveillance of global targets. “The president fully supports the 702 and was happy to see that it passed the House today”.
