US government would need warrants to search Americans' communications under new bill

Bill seeks to rein in a controversial intelligence tool

Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden, seen here on Capitol Hill in Washington on August 1, 2017, wants to limit how the government can read Americans' communications (REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein)

A bipartisan group of legislators wants the government to get warrants before it can sift through Americans’ communications captured by a controversial surveillance program.

Newly unveiled legislation would impose new controls on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which intelligence agencies use to collect transmissions from foreign targets believed to be living abroad. Largely sponsored by Democrats, the legislation has also attracted the support of a handful of Republicans.

While the program is intended to gather emails and other messages sent or received by foreigners, it also pulls in communications from American citizens. As the law currently stands, intelligence agencies can search through the reams of data by querying American’s identifying details without obtaining a warrant.

The new legislation would change that, requiring warrants to search for communications that Americans either send or are mentioned in. It would also raise the standard for the initial collection, demanding a warrant to start surveillance on a foreign target if a “significant purpose” of the eavesdropping is collecting communications from someone in the United States - a tactic that critics call “reverse targeting”.

“The days of government searching through Americans private data while skirting through back doors without a warrant must end”, Representative Ted Poe, a Texas Republican who is among the measures’ backers, said in a statement. “Americans should not be forced to sacrifice individual liberty and constitutional rights for false security”.

Intelligence officials have resisted imposing new warrant mandates on the program. An unclassified April report from the office of the Director of National Intelligence warned that “adding such a requirement would severely hamper the speed and efficiency of operations by creating an unnecessary barrier to national security professionals’ ability to identify potential threat information”.

That same report called reauthorizing the FISA section allowing foreign surveillance “the Intelligence Community’s top priority for 2017”. Congress is negotiating over extending the program, a debate that the new legislation was timed to coincide with.

In addition to imposing new warrants requirements, the bill would end the FISA program in four years, giving Congress another chance to weigh in before reauthorizing the tool.

One of the sponsors of the new measure, Senator Ron Wyden, has urged that the process take place in public hearings, writing in a letter to the leaders of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that “the public is right to expect that Congress debate the reauthorization of this authority in the open”.

“This legislation will have enormous impact on the security, liberty and constitutional rights of American people”, Mr Wyden’s letter said. “The public has therefore taken a keen interest”.