The House of Representatives on Friday approved a bill reauthorizing federal spying powers on foreign targets until 2026, while narrowly voting down an amendment that would have required a warrant to search Americans’ data swept up in the process.
The Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act was passed in a 273-147 vote, with 126 Republicans and 147 Democrats backing reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
Congress enacted FISA in 2008 to expand intelligence agencies’ ability to surveil non-US persons abroad who are linked to terrorism or may pose a national security threat.
The 88 Republicans and 59 Democrats who voted against Friday’s bill argued the FBI and other agencies should need a warrant to search communications between those foreign targets and US persons in the Section 702 database.
An amendment introduced by Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) pushing for the warrant requirement failed in a 212-212 vote, and the FISA reauthorization was expected to pass in the Democrat-controlled Senate and be signed into law by President Biden later Friday.
But Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), who voted against the bill, successfully delayed its delivery to the upper chamber by requesting another recorded vote on a motion to table further deliberation.
The House will have to take that up next week when it comes back in session. Section 702 is set to expire April 19.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), in a floor speech earlier this week, called on the House to “get FISA done” so his chamber could “jump into action to prevent this important national security authority from lapsing.”
The White House Office of Management and Budget also issued a statement of strong support for the bipartisan bill Thursday, while opposing the Biggs warrant amendment.
“The amendment would prohibit US officials from reviewing critical information that the Intelligence Community has already lawfully collected, with exceptions that are exceedingly narrow and unworkable in practice,” the White House said.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) backed the bill, which was introduced by Rep. Laurel Lee (R-Fla.), as a necessary reform to federal spying capabilities after changes were made to an earlier version that 19 Republicans had crucially voted to block on Wednesday.
Johnson touted 56 other reforms in the bill that would “stop the FBI’s abuses of FISA Section 702 inquiries and prevent another phony Russia Hoax investigation.”
Former President Donald Trump had tanked a procedural vote on the bill earlier this week, calling on House Republicans in a Truth Social post to “KILL FISA.”
He posted nothing about it on Friday, as the Section 702 spying authority would now expire halfway through his potential second term in the White House after Rules Committee Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) cut the five-year renewal period down to two years.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) said in floor debate ahead of the vote that “there already is a warrant requirement” for Americans and the bill concerned incidental collection of their data.
By way of example, Turner said that if a US person sent an email to a member of the Hamas terrorist group saying, “Thank you for the bomb-making classes,” that exchange “shouldn’t take a warrant.”
Without the spying authority, the Intelligence Committee chairman also warned, US information-gathering capabilities would be shut down overnight. “We will go dark. We will go blind,” he said.
“This amendment is not about Americans’ inboxes and outboxes. This is not about Americans’ data,” he added. “This amendment is about Hezbollah’s data, Hamas’ data and the Communist Chinese Party’s data.”
Biggs accused the US intelligence community in his floor remarks of wanting “control without any checks” on its authority — and said it was “simply inaccurate” for Turner to claim the warrant requirement would stop intelligence-gathering efforts against “Hamas or any of these nefarious actors.”
“The administration cites multiple examples where using Section 702 to monitor foreign targets has provided critical intelligence, but when it comes to warrantless searches for Americans, they can’t provide any examples of where they’ve provided any useful information,” Biggs added.
Biggs and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) joined with unlikely allies for the warrant requirement amendment: the ranking Democrat on the committee, Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, and Congressional Progressive Caucus chairwoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.).
Jordan drew attention to a 2021 filing in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that revealed the FBI had improperly queried US citizens’ data 278,000 times.
In doing so, the bureau admitted to wrongly surveilling both Black Lives Matter-affiliated protesters following the killing of George Floyd in 2020 and Trump supporters linked to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
“The FBI wasn’t even following their own rules when they did those searches,” Jordan said during debate. “That’s why we need a warrant.”
He added that in 2021 and 2022, at least 3 million US persons had their data queried by the bureau. A Judiciary bill that included the warrant amendment passed Jordan’s committee in a bipartisan 35-2 vote this past December.
“If it’s an emergency situation, the FBI doesn’t have to get a warrant,” Jordan said of his committee’s bill. “We put exceptions in there.”
“Of that over 3 million searches in a two-year time span, how many of those aren’t covered by the exceptions we have in our warrant amendment?” he asked. “We can’t get an answer.”
“If they don’t fall in the exceptions and they’re searching Americans — searching your name, your phone number, your email address in this giant database — that should scare us,” he added. “And if it’s a small number, then what’s the big deal?”
Another amendment put forward by Roy passed 269-153 and will force the FBI to report the number of US person queries conducted on a quarterly basis.
The FBI put out its own white paper last month announcing that queries of US persons’ Section 702 information had reduced 98% following internal reforms.
Proponents of the legislation — including Turner and House Intelligence ranking member Jim Himes (D-Conn.) — have pointed out the FBI surveilled Trump’s 2016 campaign aide Carter Page under Title I, not Section 702, of FISA.
That abuse involved a bogus filing with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court based on the since-debunked Steele dossier — paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign — to obtain a search warrant for the Trump aide.
Johnson released a fact sheet ahead of the Friday vote on FISA outlining reforms to the court process, as well as the querying process for Section 702 data to help rein in other abuses.
Those include prohibitions on the use of press reports to obtain a FISA warrant, restrictions on the FBI’s ability to access Section 702 data for certain purposes and criminal penalties for rogue agents who abuse the spying power.
