U.S. House Vote Narrowly Allows Rampant Abuses of Warrantless Spying Authority to Continue
cdt.org
(WASHINGTON) — Today, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a two-year extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA 702”), a controversial warrantless spying authority, and in an extremely narrow tie vote, rejected critical reforms to stop rampant abuse of the law that has been documented in recent years. FISA 702 warrantless […]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/15271710

Not a good result. The good amendment to add a warrant requirement failed on a tie vote; bad amendments to expand the scope of warrantless wiretapping passed. Next step: a Senate vote.

    • The Nexus of Privacy@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
      172·
      7 months ago

      The FBI routinely uses its authority under FISA Section 702 to get information on Americans without a warrant, ignoring the processes that are supposed to be put in place to protect people. This has nothing to do with the FISA Title III authority that was used to get information about Carter Page, no matter what you and Trump think. If you warrantless surveillance of Americans is good, then by all means you should indeed be cheering this vote – because they extended the scope of what information they can get at without a warrant.

      If on the other hand you think civil liberties are worth protecting, then you might take a moment to stop to think that there was bipartisan support, including progressive Democrats, for introducing reforms like a warrant requirement while still keeping the ability to surveil foreign agents in place. But opinions differ, there are plenty of people in both parties who don’t think civil liberties are worth protecting, so if you’re one of them you’ve got a lot of company.

        • The Nexus of Privacy@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
          81·
          7 months ago

          From the article:

          FISA 702 warrantless surveillance purports to target only foreign subjects, but in practice sweeps in a huge amount of Americans’ communications. This allows intelligence agencies to exploit a backdoor search loophole: the FBI, CIA, and NSA conduct “U.S. person queries” of FISA 702 records to deliberately pull up Americans’ private messages, all without a warrant or any court approval. This loophole has led to systemic abuse, involving thousands of improper queries each year, including those directed at protesters, campaign donors, journalists, lawmakers, and — in one case — the online dating matches of an analyst.