Biden signs off on legislation extending a key spy program
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Saturday signed legislation reauthorizing a key U.S. surveillance law after divisions over whether the FBI should be restricted from using the program to search for Americans’ data nearly forced the statute to lapse.
Barely missing its midnight deadline, the Senate had approved the bill by a 60-34 vote hours earlier with bipartisan support, extending for two years the program known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Biden thanked congressional leaders for their work.
“In the nick of time, we are reauthorizing FISA right before it expires at midnight,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said when voting on final passage began 15 minutes before the deadline. “All day long, we persisted and we persisted in trying to reach a breakthrough and in the end, we have succeeded.”
U.S. officials have said the surveillance tool, first authorized in 2008 and renewed several times since then, is crucial in disrupting terrorist attacks, cyber intrusions and foreign espionage, and has also produced intelligence that the U.S. has relied on for specific operations, such as the 2022 killing of al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri.
“If you miss a key piece of intelligence, you may miss some event overseas or put troops in harm’s way,” said Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “You may miss a plot to harm the country here, domestically, or somewhere else. So in this particular case, there’s real-life implications.”
The proposal would
renew the program, which permits the U.S. government to collect without a warrant the communications of non-Americans outside the country to gather foreign intelligence. The reauthorization faced a bumpy road to passage Friday after months of clashes between privacy advocates and national security hawks pushed consideration of the legislation to the brink of expiration.
Though the spy program was technically set to expire at midnight, the Biden administration had said it expected its authority to collect intelligence to remain operational for at least another year, thanks to an opinion this month from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which receives surveillance applications.
Hours before the law was set to expire, U.S. officials were already scrambling after two major U.S. communication providers said they would stop complying with orders through the surveillance program, according to a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Attorney General Merrick Garland praised the reauthorization and reiterated how “indispensable” the tool is to the Justice
Department.
“This reauthorization of Section 702 gives the United States the authority to continue to collect foreign intelligence information about non-U.S. persons located outside the United States, while at the same time codifying important reforms the Justice Department has adopted to ensure the protection of Americans’ privacy and civil liberties,” Garland said in a statement Saturday.
But despite the Biden administration’s urging and classified briefings to senators this week on the crucial role they say the spy program plays in protecting national security, a group of lawmakers had refused to accept the version of the bill the House sent over last week.
The lawmakers had demanded that Schumer, D-N.Y., allow votes on amendments to the legislation that would seek to address what they see as civil liberty loopholes in the bill. In the end, Schumer was able to cut a deal that would allow critics to receive floor votes on their amendments in exchange for speeding up the process for passage.
The six amendments ultimately failed to garner the necessary support on the floor to be included in the final passage.