The US Senate on Wednesday passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), after congressional leaders earlier this month stripped the bill of provisions designed to protect against excessive government surveillance. The “must pass” legislation now heads to President Joe Biden for his expected signature.
The Senate's 85-14 vote solidified a major expansion of the controversial US surveillance program, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Biden's signature would ensure the Trump administration opens up with new power to compel a vast number of companies to help wiretap calls between US spies and foreigners abroad.
Despite concerns that unprecedented spying powers would fall into the hands of controversial figures like Kash Patel, who has vowed to investigate Donald Trump's political enemies if confirmed to lead the FBI, Democrats ultimately did little to rein in the program. Tried.
The Senate Intelligence Committee first approved changes to the 702 program this summer, intended to clarify what the newly added language experts described as dangerously vague. The unclear text was introduced into law by Congress in April, with Democrats in the Senate promising to fix the issue later this year. Ultimately those efforts proved futile.
Legal experts began issuing warnings last winter over Congress' efforts to expand FISA to cover a wide range of new businesses that were not originally subject to Section 702's wiretap directives. When reauthorizing the program in April, Congress changed the definition of what the government considers an “electronic communications service provider,” a term that applies to companies that can be forced to set up wiretaps on behalf of the government. Is.
Traditionally, “electronic communications service providers” refers to phone and email providers such as AT&T and Google. But as a result of Congress redefining the term, the new limits on the government's wiretap powers are unclear.
It is widely believed that the changes were intended to help the NSA target communications stored on servers in US data centers. However, due to the classified nature of the 702 program, the updated text intentionally avoids specifying what types of new businesses will be subject to government demands.
Mark Zwillinger, one of the few private lawyers to testify before the country's secret surveillance court, wrote in April that changes to the 702 statute mean that “any American business can have its communications [wiretapped] By a homeowner having access to office wiring, or the data centers where their computers reside, expanding the 702 program to a variety of new contexts where there is an especially high probability that the communications of US citizens and other persons in the US will be intercepted by the government. Will be 'unintentionally' acquired.”