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Excerpt: "The House voted decisively Thursday to reauthorize a powerful government authority to conduct foreign surveillance on U.S. soil, overcoming opposition from privacy advocates and confusion sown by contradictory and seemingly misinformed tweets from President Trump questioning his administration's support for the program."

Paul Ryan. (photo: Getty)
Paul Ryan. (photo: Getty)


House Passes Legislation to Renew Key NSA Surveillance Program

By Karoun Demirjian and Josh Dawsey, The Washington Post

11 January 18

 

he House voted decisively Thursday to reauthorize a powerful government authority to conduct foreign surveillance on U.S. soil, overcoming opposition from privacy advocates and confusion sown by contradictory and seemingly misinformed tweets from President Trump questioning his administration’s support for the program.

The 256-to-164 vote sets up the legislation for consideration in the Senate, where leaders have said they think they can pass it before the program’s statutory authorization expires on Jan. 19.

The measure would extend for six years the government’s ability to collect from U.S. companies the emails and other communications of foreign targets located outside the United States. The intelligence community considers the program, called Section 702 after the part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act of 2008 that established it, its key national security surveillance tool.

But the fate of the program appeared to be in jeopardy Thursday morning, after the president tweeted his doubts about it, questioning his administration’s position after seeing a segment about it on Fox News Channel.

“ ‘House votes on controversial FISA ACT today,’ ” Trump wrote, citing a Fox News headline. “This is the act that may have been used, with the help of the discredited and phony Dossier, to so badly surveil and abuse the Trump Campaign by the previous administration and others?”

Trump attempted to walk back the tweet about 90 minutes later, urging lawmakers to reauthorize the program. But top Democrats seized on the confusion, calling on Republican leaders to withdraw the bill from consideration “in light of the irresponsible and inherently contradictory messages coming out of the White House today,” Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on the floor.

Republicans seemed undeterred by Democrats’ demands, plowing ahead with planned votes on the bill and a sole amendment to it Thursday morning. But the president’s mixed messages sent shock waves through the House GOP, which was gathered for a regular conference meeting when he sent his initial tweets.

Trump then called House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), and they spoke for half an hour. Later, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) alerted the GOP conference that the president had tweeted again, calming lawmakers’ nerves.

But top Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees were quick to leap on the first tweet as “irresponsible” and “untrue.”

“FISA is something the President should have known about long before he turned on Fox this morning,” Sen. Mark R. Warner (Va.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, tweeted after Trump’s post.

In his second tweet, Trump seemed to backtrack, pushing for the act to be re-upped.

“With that being said, I have personally directed the fix to the unmasking process since taking office and today’s vote is about foreign surveillance of foreign bad guys on foreign land. We need it! Get smart!” Trump wrote on Twitter.

It is unclear how Trump “personally directed the fix to the unmasking process since taking office,” because the bill’s sponsor, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), stripped the major changes to unmasking procedures from the measure before presenting it for a vote by the full House.

Senior government officials can ask spy agencies to unmask the names of Americans or U.S. organizations if they think it will help them better understand the underlying intelligence. Trump, and Nunes, accused the Obama administration of improperly revealing the identities of members of the president’s transition team. It is unclear what the dossier that alleges his campaign had ties to Russia has to do with unmasking or reauthorizing the spying program, but Trump has repeatedly denounced it in recent days.

Both Republicans and Democrats have pushed back against linking the controversy over unmasking to the FISA program the House is seeking to extend, Section 702. On Thursday, White House cyber coordinator Rob Joyce said there have “been no cases of 702 used improperly for political purposes.”

Privacy advocates in Congress objected to the measure, but were unsuccessful in their attempt to amend with legislation written by Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) that would have required law enforcement agencies to obtain warrants before being able to scour the database of those records for information about Americans who may have been in touch with foreign targets. The underlying bill requires only that the government seek a court order when it wants to use information about Americans in criminal cases. The amendment failed to pass by a vote of 183 to 233.

Trump’s administration has pushed for the FISA program to be reauthorized, with FBI Director Christopher A. Wray calling it a valuable tool to fight terrorism. The White House has issued statements this week and asked lawmakers to reauthorize it, even urging members late Wednesday night to reject a proposed amendment that would weaken the bill and probably kill its chances of passage in the Senate.

Trump’s tweet came shortly after a “Fox and Friends” segment that highlighted the FISA program, calling it “controversial.” His first seemed to side more with civil liberties groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, House Democrats and others, such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who have pushed for less invasive measures.


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