Conservative opposition is developing to a new House bill that would reauthorize a key surveillance tool used by the nation’s intelligence community to combat terrorism.
The conservative group FreedomWorks announced Monday it is opposed to the legislation because it does not go far enough to protect the privacy of Americans.
Jason Pye, the vice resident of legislative affairs, called the bill “a blatant infringement on the Fourth Amendment,” and urged House lawmakers “to defeat it when it reaches the floor.”
House GOP leaders released the bill on Friday. It would reauthorize for six years Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which allows intelligence officials to spy on communications of non-citizens outside of the United States.
A temporary measure allowing use of the spying tool expires this month.
Democrats and Republicans in both chambers are eager to reform the program for a variety of reasons. Some lawmakers believe the law infringes on the privacy of Americans caught up in foreign communications and want to add protections. Other lawmakers believe the FISA tool was used inappropriately to spy on the Trump administration earlier this year and they want increased oversight.
The House bill adds a little of both. It strengthens the requirement for intelligence officers to seek a search warrant and it would require an inspector general to review the query practices carried out by intelligence officers. But the privacy protections are not strong enough to win the approval of FreedomWorks.
"This bill would codify the backdoor search, which allows the FBI to search the 702 database for U.S. persons under an unconstitutional standard for domestic criminal offenses, and provides a path for the NSA to restart 'about' collections, which it was previously forced to end because of constitutional concerns,” Pye said Monday.
Intelligence officials in April agreed to stop “about” collections because they involved searching beyond the sender fields on electronic communications to include the contents of the messages, which many considered to be an overreach of the spying tool. These collections involve communications in which foreign targets are mentioned, but aren't the sender or receiver of the message.
A spokesman for the House Intelligence Committee, which helped author the changes, said that under the bill, "abouts" collections could only begin again after the government formulates new procedures to protect privacy that are approved by Congress.
"There are robust protections and oversight in the bill on the issues they are flagging," the spokesman said in response to the FreedomWorks criticism of the bill.
House Republican leaders announced they will bring the reauthorization measure to the floor later this week.
But if lawmakers pass it in the House, the Senate may not endorse it. Lawmakers in the upper chamber have their own proposals to reform the FISA tool, including more privacy protections.
