A federal surveillance authority that the government says supplies more than 60% of the president’s daily intelligence briefing is set to expire Friday — and Congress still hasn’t agreed on how to extend it.
The tool is FISA Section 702, a provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that allows U.S. spy agencies to collect communications of foreign targets located outside the country. The White House and intelligence officials have repeatedly pointed to that 60% figure to argue the program is indispensable to national security.
Background
Section 702 has been one of the most contested surveillance authorities in Washington for years. Supporters say it’s critical for tracking foreign adversaries and terrorist threats. Civil liberties advocates have pushed back hard, arguing the program sweeps up the communications of Americans without a warrant — a constitutional concern that has slowed every reauthorization fight.
Congress has struggled to find language that satisfies both the national security wing and members who want stricter limits on how the FBI can query the database for Americans’ information. That standoff is what’s pushing the program to the edge of expiration now.
It isn’t the first time Section 702 has faced a deadline crunch. Lawmakers have allowed short-term extensions before rather than resolve the underlying disagreements. Whether they do the same this time — or let it fully lapse — hadn’t been settled as of Thursday.
The stakes are real regardless of where you stand on the privacy debate. If the authority expires, intelligence agencies can’t initiate new collection under Section 702, though some existing collection may continue under separate legal interpretations. A full lapse would almost certainly prompt emergency pressure from the intelligence community to restore it quickly.
No vote had been scheduled in either chamber as of the NPR report published Thursday, June 12.
Originally reported by NPR. Read the original report.
