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Liberal activists have unleashed fury on Democrats after party leaders rallied to approve a bill expanding the government’s chief snooping authority without any significant new safeguards for Americans’ privacy.
Democrats provided most of the votes as the House renewed Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and, in a separate vote, shot down an attempt to add a requirement for the FBI to obtain warrants before it could snoop through data for Americans’ communications.
The votes were stunning reversals from six years ago when Democrats led opposition to FISA and Republicans were the snooping authority’s principal supporters. Civil liberties advocates pondered what changed.
“Dems tank tie vote on key privacy protections,” blared the headline of Demand Progress, a liberal pressure group.
“This is a sharp betrayal of every American,” said Sean Vitka, the group’s policy director. “Americans will not forget this stab in the back by the House, in particular those members who have pretended for years to be aligned with civil liberties.”
The bill renews Section 702 authority for two years, giving the government the power to scoop up massive amounts of communications of foreign targets overseas.
The legislation cleared the House on a 273-147 vote, but the real drama came with the amendment to add a warrant requirement. That amendment failed on a 212-212 tie vote, with 126 Democrats and 86 Republicans opposing the warrant.
FISA opponents plan to force a revote on Monday. They hope public pressure or the return of lawmakers absent from Friday’s vote can change the outcome. If not, the measure will go to the Senate for likely approval.
Intelligence officials have begged for Section 702 to be renewed. Otherwise, they said, they would be blinded to major terrorist threats and would lose eyes on other emerging dangers such as Chinese aggression or fentanyl smuggling.
FISA has always scrambled usual partisan lines. The most conservative and liberal lawmakers have found common ground in suspicion of the intelligence community and worrying about core constitutional rights.
More Democrats than Republicans have traditionally fought FISA. In 2018, the last time FISA was up for renewal, 20% of Republicans and 65% of Democrats voted against renewal.
This year, the Republican opposition doubled to more than 40%. Democrats’ opposition fell to less than 30%, even though the legislation allowed snooping on a broader array of foreign intelligence activities.
Republicans used to be skeptical of adding a warrant requirement, while Democrats were strongly in favor. That has reversed.
Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said she was “baffled” by the votes. She said the chief explanation for Democrats’ reversal is President Biden, whose White House waged a massive pressure campaign “like nothing I’ve seen in my many years of doing this work.”
“White House officials were not only making calls today, they were standing outside the House floor, along with DOJ and CIA officials, telling Democrats that President Biden wanted them to vote against warrant protections for Americans and shamelessly misrepresenting the facts about backdoor searches and about this amendment,” Ms. Goitein said on Friday.
Patrick G. Eddington, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who monitors FISA matters, said former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was also instrumental in Democrats’ newfound support of FISA.
In a forceful floor speech, the California Democrat called on her party to deliver the FISA renewal to Mr. Biden and to reject the warrant requirement, which she said would “undermine” American security. Civil liberties advocates said it was tough to square her position now with past votes.
“I’m convinced that had Pelosi not taken to the House floor to advocate against a Fourth Amendment warrant requirement, the Biggs-Jayapal warrant requirement amendment would’ve passed easily,” Mr. Eddington, a staffer to former Rep. Rush Holt, New Jersey Democrat, told The Washington Times.
“You’d have to ask Pelosi why she supported closing the 702 ‘back door loophole’ during Obama’s second term but has now opposed it with President Biden in office,” he said. “The facts about the 702 program now are far worse than they were back then.”
The Times reached out to the White House and Mrs. Pelosi’s office for this report.
Section 702, first approved in 2008, must be reauthorized regularly.
The current authorization runs through Friday, leaving just days for Congress to clear the bill.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, had to labor heavily to cobble together a winning coalition to advance the renewal legislation in the House.
A pivotal moment was his agreement to cut the next renewal target for the law from five years to two years, meaning opponents will get another chance to force changes much earlier.
The legislation makes 56 changes to current law, including increased accountability at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and criminal penalties for wrongdoing.
FBI Director Christopher A. Wray said those changes largely codify improvements he has made internally.
He vehemently fought the idea of a warrant. He said the process would be too cumbersome.
Last year, he said, agents knew a terrorist suspect overseas had contact with someone the FBI thought was already in the U.S. After a query, he said, agents uncovered someone who had amassed weapons and bomb-making materials and already circled targets.
“There is no judge on the planet that would have given us a warrant based on what we knew at the time,” Mr. Wray told Congress last week.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
• Alex Miller can be reached at amiller@washingtontimes.com.
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