FISA Program Reauthorization Backed, But 1 Expert Seeks Major Changes
Surveillance experts testifying at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act said they support reauthorization of FISA, which targets foreign people who may pose a national security threat. But Elizabeth Goitein, co-director-liberty and national security program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, said major changes are needed, especially on incidental collection of possibly millions of electronic communications of Americans during surveillance. The section sunsets at year's end.
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The committee first heard from intelligence and law enforcement officials in a classified briefing that lasted about three hours before the public hearing. Section 702 targets non-U.S. persons located outside the country to collect foreign intelligence information, but specifically prohibits intentionally targeting a U.S. person.
Goitein said in response to several lawmakers' questions that the "best estimate" is that millions of internet communications of Americans are collected, such as their phone numbers or email passwords. "I wish I had better numbers for you," she told Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. She told Rep. Tom Marino, R-Pa., that a coalition has asked the intelligence community for the number since 2015 but never got one (see 1510290051).
Ranking member John Conyers, D-Mich., said a bipartisan group of House Judiciary lawmakers hasn't received a response to a letter it sent in December to then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper seeking an estimate of the number of communications of Americans captured under 702 and the methodology used (see 1612160040). "I had hoped for better," said Conyers, adding that the estimate is needed to have "meaningful debate." He said collecting large amounts of information on American citizens and applying that "to purposes having nothing to do with counterintelligence or counterterrorism is, in a word, wrong." The White House is backing reauthorization without any changes, Reuters reported. The White House didn't immediately comment about it.
Saul Ewing attorney April Doss who is a former NSA employee, Adam Klein, senior fellow for the Center for a New American Security, and U.S. Naval Academy assistant professor Jeff Kosseff testified that they supported reauthorization. They had recommendations to enhance transparency and oversight, as expected (see 1702280014).
Access Now, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and 15 European-based civil society organizations sent a letter to EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourová Wednesday urging her to push for substantive changes to U.S surveillance laws including 702. The coalition said the program without such changes "will continue to threaten the free flow of information overseas, and negatively impact global data protection and privacy."
The coalition criticized what it said was one big change being considered: limiting back-end searches of U.S. persons' data "without limiting in any way the suspicionless surveillance targeted at the hundreds of millions of people globally." That would essentially mean European rights are "inconsequential," the groups said. The coalition said Jourová, planning to visit the U.S. in early spring, should suspend the Privacy Shield trans-Atlantic data-transfer arrangement if flaws in the U.S. redress and oversight mechanisms and in the collection, access and use of personal data aren't fixed.
Computer & Communications Industry Association President Ed Black in a Tuesday statement backed "appropriate reforms to ensure surveillance programs operate within Constitutional limits, safeguard Internet users’ rights, and are transparent so that Congress, the courts, and the public can deliver robust oversight.”