Congress is moving to shut down a controversial surveillance program and will take no for an answer from the executive branch.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Tuesday that it is seeking to extend the surveillance authority, known as Section 702.
The Biden admin is urging Congress to re-up a controversial surveillance program, asking lawmakers to grant the intelligence community the same powers with virtually no changes.
— POLITICO (@politico) February 28, 2023
That request is unlikely to fly under divided government. https://t.co/Oa4Imv133h
The authority is intended to collect electronic communications from foreign nationals who are living overseas, but it also has the capability to gather information from Americans.
“The Attorney General (AG) and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) may jointly authorize the targeting of (i) non-U.S. persons (ii) who are reasonably believed to be outside of the United States (iii) to acquire foreign intelligence information,” Section 702 of the law states.
The DOJ’s reauthorization effort, however, was immediately shot down by lawmakers, setting the stage for months-long struggle that could extend past the deadline of Dec. 31.
The Biden administration will also face opposition from Democrats who are concerned that the program doesn’t have sufficient safeguards, as well as from their typical adversaries in Congress, the Republicans.
House Republicans are also discussing letting the surveillance authority sunset completely. Under the previous Trump administration, the GOP accused the federal government of unlawfully targeting former President Donald Trump and his associates, severely souring relations between the party and the law enforcement apparatus.
Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, meanwhile, has advocated for continuing the program during a Brookings Institution event on Tuesday.
“What keeps me up at night is thinking about what will happen if we fail to renew Section 702 of FISA,” Olsen said.
Last year, court-ordered information surfaced showing that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) spied on over 3.3 million American citizens without first obtaining a warrant.
According to Republican Ohio Reps. Jim Jordan and Mike Turner, the FBI took advantage of its Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to gather intelligence against Americans who have had any interactions with foreign entities targeted by the federal government.
A total of 3,394,053 searches were made against individual American citizens, a 250% increase in searches during Biden’s first year in office. In contrast, there were 1,324,057 total queries made in 2020.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in response that more than half of these searches were part of a larger investigation of alleged attempts by Russian nationals to target America’s infrastructure.
