US Congress extends controversial surveillance power under FISA for 10 days

Congress grants brief extension to warrantless surveillance authority, setting up a high-stakes deadline for reform. | Contesto: cronaca

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• US Congress extends controversial surveillance power under FISA for 10 days

Contesto

In a late-night move, the United States Congress passed a short-term extension of a controversial surveillance authority, granting the intelligence community a ten-day reprieve. The provision, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), was set to expire at midnight but will now remain in effect until April 19th. The stopgap measure, passed without significant debate, averts an immediate lapse in a tool officials call critical to national security but which privacy advocates have long condemned as a warrantless backdoor for spying on American citizens. The core of the controversy lies in how intelligence agencies utilize Section 702. The law was originally designed to target the communications of non-Americans located outside the U.S. for foreign intelligence purposes. However, in practice, it also sweeps in the communications of an untold number of Americans when they are in contact with those foreign targets. This incidental collection has provided the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with a vast, warrantless database they can query for a range of investigations, including those unrelated to foreign threats. For over a decade, a bipartisan coalition of civil liberties groups and lawmakers has argued this practice violates the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. Critics point to documented instances of FBI analysts improperly querying the 702 database, including for information on Black Lives Matter protesters, campaign donors, and members of Congress. "This authority has been abused time and again to spy on Americans without a warrant," said a statement from a coalition of privacy organizations following the extension. "A ten-day patch does nothing to address the fundamental constitutional flaws at its heart." National security officials, from the Director of National Intelligence to the Attorney General, have mounted an intense lobbying campaign, warning that allowing Section 702 to lapse would blind the U.S. to imminent threats. They have declassified examples where the program provided intelligence that...

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Categoria: cronaca