In 2008, Congress passed a set of updates to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), including Section 702 which authorized warrantless surveillance of non-U.S. persons reasonably believed to be outside the country. However, documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealed that 702 was being used far more heavily than many expected, serving as the legal basis for the collection of large quantities of telephone and Internet traffic passing through the United States (and unlike 215, including content rather than just metadata). Still, as 702 only permits overseas collection, most criticism of the provision has come from abroad. But many domestic privacy advocates also worry that large amounts of American communication are being swept up “incidentally” and then used as well.
Latest in FISA: 702 Collection
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found that incidental collection of U.S. persons’ communications under Section 702 does not violate the Fourth Amendment, but raised constitutional questions related to querying databases containing these communications.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that the case of Agron Hasbajrami should be returned to the district court level for further proceedings. Hasbajrami alleged that the incidental collection of his communications under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act that led to his arrest violated his Fourth Amendment rights.
Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union and federal public defenders filed an opening brief on behalf of Jamshid Muhtorov in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Mr.
The legislative debate over Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has ended with passage of a six-year reauthorization that omitted many of the provisions privacy advocates had argued were necessary. But the legal and policy debate is likely to continue in the U.S. and in European courts.
We took different positions in the overall debate on Section 702. But we agree that there is an important step the U.S. government can take now to bolster transparency and accountability within the program without unduly burdening legitimate intelligence activities.
The Senate voted 65 to 34 to extend FISA Section 702 authorities for six years on Thursday, one day before the temporary authorization was set to expire. The House passed the reauthorization measure on Jan. 11, and it will now head to President Donald Trump’s desk for his signature.
The Senate voted by a razor-thin margin Tuesday to invoke cloture on the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017, which would reauthorize for six years Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The bill includes some significant changes to 702, though the reforms are substantially more modest than those sought by privacy advocates.
As the year is coming to a close, Congress has now missed the deadline for reauthorizing FISA Section 702. Molly Reynolds, a Brookings fellow in Governance Studies and expert on Congress, joined Benjamin Wittes and Susan Hennessey for a converation on the failure to reauthorize and what happens next. They discussed the politics of Section 702, the influence of this year's overall legislative agenda, and what to expect in 2018 for the crucial intelligence apparatus.
The House Permament Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) has released its version of the FISA Amendements Reauthorization Act of 2017.
You can find the document here:
On Nov. 8, the House Judiciary Committee passed, 27-8, a revised version of the USA Liberty Act of 2017 with several amendments. Below is a summary of the bill the committee passed, including key changes.
NOTE: This post summarizes the text of Sen. Richard Burr's bill as it stood before a closed committee markup hearing on Oct. 25. An updated bill is now available here.