Congress asked to reauthorize warrantless surveillance

White House says it’s a necessary tool, but it faces critics.

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration urged Congress on Tuesday to renew a controversial warrantless surveillance law, emphasiz- ing that security officials use it for a broad range of foreign policy and national security goals such as detecting espionage by countries includ- ing China and Iran or stop- ping hackers.

The administration’s effort is likely to face headwinds because many Republicans have adopted former Pres- ident Donald Trump’s distrust of security agencies and surveillance, bolstering privacy advocates who have long been skeptical of the law, known as Section 702.

To head off the resistance, the Biden administration has sought to cast the law, which would otherwise expire at the end of the year, as a tool that is used not only for coun- terterrorism but has also aided the government in identifying economic risks and preventing foreign actors from creating weapons of mass destruction.

In a letter to lawmakers, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Avril Haines, director of national intel- ligence, described the law as vital. “There is no way to replicate Section 702’s speed, reliability, specificity and insight,” they wrote.

Enacted in 2008, Section 702 legalized a form of a warrantless wiretap- ping program code-named Stellarwind, which President George W. Bush secretly started after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It continues to be a counterterrorism tool; the letter also stressed, as National Secu- rity Agency Director Paul M. Nakasone said in Janu- ary, that the surveillance program played a role in the drone strike in August that killed al-qaida leader Ayman al-zawahri.

But despite its recent shift in emphasis on uses beyond counterterrorism, the government has relied on Section 702 for the full array of foreign intelligence purposes from the start.

It allows the government to collect — on domestic soil and without a warrant — com- munications of targeted foreigners abroad, including when those people are interacting with Americans. The National Security Agency can order email services such as Google to turn over cop- ies of all messages in the accounts of any foreign user and network operators such as AT&T to furnish copies of any phone calls, texts and internet communications to or from a foreign target.

Section 702 is an excep- tion to the Foreign Intelli- gence Act of 1978, or FISA, which generally requires the government to obtain individualized warrants from a court to carry out electronic surveillance activities.

Republicans lawmakers have traditionally been more supportive of national-security powers such as surveillance. But Trump’s repeated efforts to stoke mistrust of the FBI and surveillance have altered the political calculus in the effort to renew Section 702.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, a Trump ally who is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which shares jurisdiction over FISA with the Intelligence Committee, told Fox News in October that “I think we should not even reauthorize …”