President Biden has signed a bill on Saturday, which extends the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s (FISA) warrantless surveillance program for an additional two years.
Following hours of fierce debate, the Senate passed the reauthorization bill early Saturday, narrowly avoiding the shutdown of a critical national information gathering tool.
Senators voted 60–34 to send the bill to Biden’s desk shortly after the midnight deadline. The proposal appeared to be on the verge of failure until Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) announced a breakthrough on the Senate floor.
The Act expands the government’s power to eavesdrop on foreigners abroad, a technique that also intercepts communications between Americans.
The Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act includes significant FISA Section 702 changes, but it falls short of privacy advocates’ hopes.
Following the vote, the White House released a statement congratulating Congress on approving “one of the United States’ most vital intelligence collection tools.”
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement following the vote, “The Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act will retain essential authority to understand and protect against a wide range of dangerous threats to Americans while enhancing safeguards for privacy and civil liberties through the most robust set of reforms ever included in legislation to reauthorize Section 702.”
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) stated on Friday that the bill is not a “clean reauthorization” of the program but rather a reform package that would address “many of the problems that we’ve experienced with Section 702.”
Nonetheless, the debate over the legislation exposed profound splits inside both parties over a 15-year-old program that supporters herald as critical to national security while detractors contend it is a serious violation of Americans’ right to privacy.
The House passed the extension after a group of 19 Republican lawmakers blocked a procedural vote to start debate, denying them any of their policy requests.
