Surprise- Feds Want Spying Law Extended
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) allows the feds, with minimal restrictions, to spy on Americans. Neither side of the aisle are in favor of that. In fact, since the law was enacted after 9/11, it has “sunsetted” every few years, typically until a couple of months after the next presidential election.
Well April 20th – is not a date after an election, which does make the renewal an election issue, is when it expires next. That is a month from now. April 20th is national weed day (not an official holiday) and Hitler’s birthday. Neither of these are associated with surveillance. Well, maybe Hitler was.
House speaker Mike Johnson is going to ask for a “clean renewal” for 18 months next week. 18th months would have it expire before then next presidential election. Maybe Johnson doesn’t understand arithmetic or maybe he thinks it will work to the Repubs advantage. Given neither side likes the law, that seems odd.
Neither hardline Repubs nor progressive Dems will vote for a renewal absent more protections for Americans. FBI director Patel would like it renewed for 5-10 years. That is HIGHLY unlikely to happen. The FBI in particular has been a really bad offender at breaking the law as it currently stands. As I said, it does have somewhat weak protections against spying on Americans (it is supposed to be used to spy on foreign terrorists like the 9/11 kind, but once you have power, well, you know the rest), but the FBI has not been able to comply with even that, although they claim they are doing better. This is where Repubs and Dems could become strange bedfellows.
The current Director of National Security, Tulsi Gabbard, who ran for President as a democrat, introduced legislation to repeal the authority altogether. Now her administration wants to extend it.
While it is possible it MIGHT pass in the House as is, it is going to be a harder sell in the Senate. The last few times it got renewed, it either got down to the wire or actually expired for a little while, so stay tuned on this one.
Credit: The Record
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