U.S. surveillance powers set to expire temporarily

WA SHINGTON» Three surveillance powers available to the U.S. government are set to expire Sunday, possibly temporarily, after a trio of senators opposed a bipartisan House bill that would renew the authorities and impose new restrictions.

The Senate will consider the House bill next week, but it is unclear if President Donald Trump, a skeptic of the nation’s intelligence community, would sign it. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had hoped to pass the legislation Thursday, but he was forced to delay consideration past the expiration date after Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said they would object.

The three senators, longtime critics of government surveillance, said the House bill would still give the government too much power to surveil Americans. The House legislation, negotiated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, would renew several provisions the FBI sees as vital to fighting terrorism but also aim to ensure stricter oversight of how the bureau conducts surveillance.

Lee proposed a deal on the Senate floor Thursday — extension of the current authorities if the Senate would consider several amendments to the House bill that would further limit them. Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr, speaking on the floor for McConnell, objected to that deal, saying the Senate should instead pass the House bill.

“We’re not a rubber stamp for the House of Representatives,” Lee said. “We’re certainly not a rubber stamp for the Deep State.”

One of the expiring provisions permits the FBI to obtain court orders to collect business records on subjects in national security investigations. Another, known as the “roving wiretap” provision, permits surveillance on subjects even after they’ve changed phones. The third allows agents to monitor subjects who don’t have ties to international terrorism organizations.

The House legislation, passed Wednesday, is a compromise that reflects angst in both parties about the way the surveillance powers have been used but also a reluctance to strip those powers from the government’s arsenal. Republicans and Democrats in the

House broadly agreed that they did not want civil liberties sacrificed in efforts to thwart terrorism and other crimes.

In addition, Republicans aggressively had been seeking changes to the law since the Justice Department’s investigation into Trump’s campaign and Russia, while many Democrats had concerns about government surveillance.

At the behest of those Republicans, the House compromise takes aim at some of the missteps the Justice Department has acknowledged making during the Russia investigation. Applications under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to eavesdrop on a former Trump campaign aide were riddled with omissions and missteps, according to an inspector general report.

The measure would require that officers responsible for FISA applications certify that the department has been advised of any information that could undercut or contradict the premise of the surveillance. In the Russia investigation, some of the information the FBI omitted from its applications cut against the idea that former Trump adviser Carter Page was a Russian agent, the watchdog found.

Page has denied that and was never charged with wrongdoing.