House lawmakers permitted a four-month extension of warrantless surveillance through the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Thursday.
The lower chamber voted 310-118 to pass the annual national-defense bill after the Senate approved the legislation Wednesday. Slipped into the measure was a reauthorization of the federal government’s warrantless spying on American citizens known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The 2008 law allows federal intelligence agencies to conduct warrantless surveillance that’s ostensibly limited to foreign nationals but has been routinely abused to surveil American citizens. The controversial law will now bypass significant reform for another four months through the NDAA.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, criticized the extension in a Blaze op-ed on Monday, writing, “The FBI has used Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to conduct warrantless ‘backdoor’ searches of the private electronic communications of American citizens. It has done so, moreover, not just sporadically and by accident but quite deliberately and on hundreds of thousands of occasions.”
The FBI abused the federal spy program to conduct surveillance on the Trump campaign, but the government’s abuses extend far beyond presidential opponents and into the lives of ordinary American citizens.
Former Acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell wrote to lawmakers on X, formerly known as Twitter, “You won’t be allowed to say you understand the abuses of the FBI if you vote to reauthorize the current FISA program.”
You won’t be allowed to say you understand the abuses of the FBI if
