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<\/p>\nFrom DNYUZ.com<\/p>\n
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The House passed a bipartisan adjustment of key surveillance laws on Wednesday, cobbling together an unusual coalition of lawmakers to approve some new privacy protections for Americans and extend three expiring F.B.I. tools for investigating terrorism and espionage.<\/p>\n
The vote appeared to be a breakthrough after weeks of negotiations in both the House and the Senate to prevent the surveillance tools from expiring this weekend and to address abuses identified in F.B.I. applications to wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser. Though civil libertarians in both parties opposed it as a half-measure that fell short of the kind of sweeping protections they favor, the bill passed with strong Democratic and Republican support.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is by no means a perfect bill,\u201d said Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. He said he would have liked further changes, \u201cbut this bill includes important reforms.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the Senate, Republican leaders were trying to line up an expedited Thursday vote, but their aides said it would depend on whether the bill\u2019s opponents would use Senate rules to slow down passage. A handful of senators have long championed broader surveillance reforms, like Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, and Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, and argue that the House changes leave Americans\u2019 privacy at risk of intrusion by government investigators.<\/p>\n
Even if they stall the bill, once it does make it to a Senate vote, a similar bipartisan coalition of lawmakers most likely will amount to the 60 votes needed to overcome objections.<\/p>\n
Congress was set to leave town on Thursday for a weeklong recess, and it was not clear how quickly the Senate could act \u2014 and whether it would allow the expiring F.B.I. tools to temporarily lapse.<\/p>\n
Republican House officials involved in the negotiations said they had assurances that President Trump would sign the bill into law if it reaches his desk, though they conceded its opponents could still try to sway him to object and ask for further changes. The president has long nursed theories that the F.B.I. spied on his campaign and at one point suggested to lawmakers that he would not reauthorize the expiring provisions without broader changes.<\/p>\n
The deal came together just 24 hours before Wednesday\u2019s vote, the product of an unusual set of allies who just a month ago were at war over Mr. Trump\u2019s impeachment, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi; the top House Republican, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California; Mr. Nadler; Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee; and Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a Republican firebrand.<\/p>\n
Politically, the bill represents Congress\u2019s policy response to an inspector general report that found numerous errors and omissions<\/a> by the F.B.I. in applications under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, to wiretap the former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, during the Russia investigation. The changes to FISA in the bill would build on an overhaul that the F.B.I., working with the FISA court, has already made to its own procedures.<\/a><\/p>\n Substantively, the bill is driven by the Sunday expiration of three laws the F.B.I. uses in national security investigations. While the laws did not apply to the Page wiretap applications, they have been swept up in the debate because both civil libertarians and Trump allies see legislation to extend them as a vehicle for a broader FISA overhaul.<\/p>\n The measure would extend the expiring laws, which do things like permit the F.B.I. to obtain business records in a terrorism or espionage investigation, while terminating legal authority for an expensive, dysfunctional and defunct National Security Agency system<\/a> that had allowed that agency\u2019s counterterrorism analysts to swiftly gain access to logs of Americans\u2019 phone calls.<\/p>\n The bill would also make some changes to the FISA court and traditional FISA wiretaps, revisions that some national security hawks have viewed with skepticism but civil libertarians say fall short.<\/p>\n For example, the proposal would expand when FISA judges \u2014 who normally hear only from the Justice Department when weighing surveillance applications \u2014 should appoint an outsider to critique the government\u2019s arguments. Under the bill, outsiders should be appointed when an application \u201cpresents exceptional concerns\u201d about First Amendment rights, which could apply to investigations touching on political campaigns or religious activity.<\/p>\n Some House lawmakers have wanted to require outside critics any time an American is a surveillance target, no matter how routine. The Justice Department objected that that was unnecessary and would have far greater operational consequences.<\/p>\n The bill would also make clear that the government cannot use a FISA business records order to collect information, like cellphone location data, that in a criminal investigation requires a search warrant, which has a higher legal standard.<\/p>\n And it would expand criminal penalties for misusing FISA, raising from five to eight years<\/a> the prison sentence for engaging in electronic surveillance without following its procedures.<\/p>\n