The US Senate early yesterday voted to reauthorize a key US surveillance law after divisions over whether the FBI should be restricted from using the program to search for Americans’ data nearly forced the statute to lapse.
The legislation approved 60-34 would extend for two years the program known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that US President Joe Biden “will swiftly sign the bill.”
Photo: AFP
“In the nick of time, we are reauthorizing FISA right before it expires at midnight,” US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said when voting on final passage began 15 minutes before the deadline. “All day long, we persisted and we persisted in trying to reach a breakthrough and in the end, we have succeeded.”
The reauthorization of the bill faced a long, bumpy road to final passage after months of clashes between privacy advocates and national security hawks.
Although the surveillance tool, first authorized in 2008, only targets non-Americans in other countries, it collects communications of Americans when they are in contact with those targeted.
US Senator Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the chamber, had been pushing a proposal that would require US officials to get a warrant before accessing US communications.
“If the government wants to spy on my private communications or the private communications of any American, they should be required to get approval from a judge, just as our Founding Fathers intended in writing the Constitution,” Durbin said.
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