The reauthorization of a warrantless electronic surveillance tool Section 702 is set to expire on April 19 unless Congress votes to extend it.
Spying stymied: The reauthorization of a warrantless electronic surveillance tool hit a snag in the House on Wednesday, as a group of Republicans revolted against Speaker of the House Mike Johnson’s (R–La.) plan to bring the bill to the floor without guaranteeing the inclusion of key privacy-protecting reforms.
By a vote of 193–228, the House failed to approve a preliminary measure that would have set the terms of a floor debate over the renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows intelligence services to scoop up vast amounts of electronic communications between Americans and individuals overseas. The 19 Republicans who voted to sink the preliminary vote want to include a requirement that American law enforcement agencies get warrants before being allowed to access the Section 702 database to obtain information about American citizens.
Republican leaders promised to allow a floor vote on including the warrant requirement, but Rep. Chip Roy (R–Texas), one of the holdouts, told Roll Call that he was unwilling to support “a pre-cooked determination that we’re not going to pass a warrant protection.”
The need for reform should be fairly obvious: The FBI routinely uses the Section 702 database to troll through communications that have been “incidentally” collected from Americans who are not the targets of Section 702 surveillance. Even a White House advisory board has said the program lacks essential privacy protections.
Section 702 is set to expire on April 19 unless Congress votes to extend it. (For more on the fight over Section 702’s reauthorization, check out this week’s edition of Elizabeth Nolan Brown’s newsletter, Sex & Tech.)
Weighing in: Both the American Civil Liberties Union (ALCU) and former President Donald Trump cheered the holdup of Section 702 reauthorization.
“Section 702 has been abused by the U.
