Trump allies hope to use new spy powers debate to their political advantage: report

29 April 2024

In 2008, the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act (FISA) of 1978 was amended via the FISA Amendments Act and the surveillance powers of Section 702.

At the time, President George W. Bush was serving his second term, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-California) was House speaker. Section 702 enjoyed bipartisan support — as well as opposition on both the left and the right — and it continued after Democrat Barack Obama was sworn in as president in January 2009.

Yet many years later, Section 702 remains a source of heated debate.

In an article published by Politico on April 29, reporters Jordain Carney and John Sakellariadis detail the ways in which pro-Donald Trump Republicans are hoping to use 702 to their political advantage.

"The intelligence community and its allies in Congress waged an all-out battle to preserve a contentious government spy power — and they won, fending off a conservative-liberal coalition that demanded a dramatic overhaul," the Politico journalists explain. "But they may not be celebrating for long."

Carney and Sakellariadis elaborate, "That's because, in order to push through reauthorization of the surveillance power known as Section 702, which allows the government to collect and search foreign communications without a warrant, Speaker Mike Johnson had to make an eleventh-hour concession to hardliners on his right this month by slashing the program's extension from five years to two years."

According to Carney and Sakellariadis, Republicans who "haven't given up on slashing the scope of government's wiretapping authority are already strategizing about how to win the next battle in 2026."

READ MORE: Is SCOTUS in on the coup?

"They see their prospects as significantly boosted if former President Donald Trump — who earlier this month called on Congress to 'kill' the broader spy law that Section 702 is nested in — wins back the White House in November," the Politico journalists report. "The shorter timeframe 'is certainly better, because we'll get another whack at the kind of reforms that we think we need to have,' Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said in an interview…. No matter who wins the White House, the enduring push to revisit the spy power amounts to a warning for intelligence agencies that helped the Biden Administration lobby hard to reauthorize the program."

Read Politico's full report at this link.

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