The House of Representatives has failed to renew the U.S. government’s warrant-less surveillance law before it is due to expire on Friday, all but guaranteeing that it will lapse for the first time. The failure to pass the bill, which needed a two-thirds majority to pass, comes as lawmakers protest the appointment of a controversial Trump ally to oversee U.S. intelligence agencies.
The House voted 218-198 on the bill, with 19 Republican lawmakers voting against it. According to Politico, the next vote is scheduled for June 23. The spy law, officially dubbed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), broadly allows U.S. intelligence agencies to collect vast amounts of information, including on Americans, to identify foreign hackers, spies and potential terrorists.
Critics have been calling for overwhelming reform of FISA, citing abuses of the law by multiple past U.S. administrations. Lawmakers from both parties had sought provisions that would require spy agencies to first obtain a court-approved warrant before being allowed to access the private communications of Americans, though the Trump government had been calling for a clean re-authorization of the law.
The controversy over FISA comes as the President appointed one of his allies, Bill Pulte, as the acting U.S. director of national intelligence. The cabinet-level position oversees the government’s dozen-plus spy agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. However, Pulte’s appointment was met with opposition from lawmakers who feared he would use the position to attack Trump’s political opponents and gut the top intelligence office that he would oversee.
The appointment of Pulte stoked fears that he would prioritize politics over national security. Democrats had warned that Pulte’s appointment would be a greater risk to U.S. national security than allowing the law to expire, according to The Washington Post. Pulte, who has no intelligence or national security experience, was set to start on the job on June 19.
However, the administration pulled Pulte’s nomination and replaced him in the role with Jay Clayton, who currently serves as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and was previously the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission. But by the time news of Clayton’s appointment broke, many lawmakers had already left the capital for a week-long break, making any last-minute deal to salvage FISA unlikely.
Section 702 of FISA came to mainstream attention during a surveillance scandal in 2013 that embroiled the National Security Agency and several close U.S. allies. Former NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked thousands of documents to journalists, revealing the scope of U.S.’ global surveillance operations, which also included Americans even though they are meant to be largely constitutionally exempt from U.S. surveillance.
While the law itself will expire on Friday, the U.S. government’s spy powers or programs are unlikely to cease any time soon. The spy programs authorized under FISA were already approved in March as part of an annual certification process by the Washington D.C.-based Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISC, which oversees the government’s surveillance programs and hears applications for surveillance in secret.
U.S. authorities can still use its surveillance tools under FISA until March 2027, allowing much of the government’s mass surveillance programs to continue operating. But phone companies that provide rolling logs of calls made by their customers to the government may be unwilling to share this information without a clear law allowing them to do so.
Bipartisan lawmakers continue to warn of FISA abuses regardless. Earlier this year, Sen. Ron Wyden, a senior Democrat who has long served on the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned that FISA is still being actively used to secretly violate Americans’ constitutional rights.
Source: Original article