House FISA bill extends warrantless surveillance with cosmetic reforms, critics say

Leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives released the text of a negotiated bill to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for an additional three years. The program enables federal agents to read Americans' communications without a warrant. The bill leaves untouched the kind of warrantless search of Americans' communications that a federal court ruled unconstitutional last year. It follows House Speaker Mike Johnson's failure to secure a clean 18-month extension last week. The 702 program has become increasingly controversial due to revelations that federal agents have used it to spy on racial justice protesters, political donors, journalists, and sitting members of Congress. Oversight mechanisms credited with curbing prior FBI abuses have been dismantled under the current administration. The bill contains several provisions that appear to constrain the FBI's ability to access the 702 database. Section 2 would require the FBI to send lawyers at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence a written justification each month for every query using an American's identifier. However, the ODNI office has a fraction of the staff of the FBI's shuttered Office of Internal Auditing, no subpoena power, and no authority to suppress queries. Section 3 threatens FBI employees with up to five years in prison for knowingly and willfully violating querying rules. That standard is historically a graveyard for prosecutions. Section 4 bars conduct that is already illegal. Section 6 is the only provision with prospective bite, striking language that lets an FBI supervisor approve a query and leaving the decision to an attorney. Those attorneys sit within the class of career employees the administration reclassified as at-will last month. Senator Ron Wyden called the bill a rubber stamp for warrantless surveillance. Former Republican House Judiciary chair Bob Goodlatte said the reforms merely restate conduct already forbidden by law.