A battle over an extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is leading to an unlikely alliance of conservative Republicans and progressive Democrats in Congress.
Section 702 of FISA, enacted in 2008, greatly expanded the ability of United States intelligence services to collect foreign data without a court order, ostensibly to counteract terrorism and espionage. Lawmakers have criticized the measure as government overreach, as the data of U.S. citizens inevitably get caught up in the sweep. Conservative Republicans and progressive Democrats have become the loudest voices in the effort to decline to renew it upon its expiration at the end of the year.
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On Wednesday, 50 House members, led by Reps. Warren Davidson (R-OH), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), and Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), signed a joint letter addressed to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), objecting to an effort to combine the National Defense Authorization Act with a temporary extension of FISA.
“The privacy of Americans should be of the utmost importance to our government, and yet, we have seen too many examples of unchecked, warrantless surveillance of Americans,” said Jayapal, chairwoman of the House Progressive Caucus. “An overhaul is necessary to protect Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights and their sensitive, personal data. Section 702 reauthorization should be subject to strong scrutiny and debate and cannot be included in larger, must-pass legislation. Congress must work to stop the government from warrantlessly spying on Americans.”
“The intelligence community is attacking our Fourth Amendment privacy rights,” wrote Biggs, a member of the House Freedom Caucus. “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. Reauthorization of this spying authority cannot be tied to a massive piece of ‘must-pass’ legislation like the NDAA. This would be an affront to the American people—who have voiced their strong disapproval of Section 702—and to the integrity of the legislative process.”
Biggs added that he was “thankful for Rep. Davidson and Rep. Lofgren’s leadership on this important issue.”
Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), chairman of the Freedom Caucus, expressed similar concerns to Fox News.
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“They want to use clean FISA, which I oppose,” Roy said. “But a 30- to 60-day extension of FISA while we negotiate reforms [is] not the end of the world if it’s stand-alone, right? Because then it’s kind of staying on its own merit. I can vote no, maybe it passes.
“But if you take FISA and you add it to the NDAA, and we know that the NDAA is going to be stripped of our fixes on our side on abortion tourism, transgender surgeries, DEI, critical race theory … you’re using the fear of the security of this country under FISA collection of data, and you’re using that extension to pass a crap NDAA bill,” Roy added.
