Congress Is About to Vote On Expanding the Warrantless Surveillance of Americans

Congress Is About to Vote On Expanding the Warrantless Surveillance of Americans

6 years ago
Anonymous $1bh8zaeyQS

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/zmqqdy/fisa-702-backdoor-upstream-surveillance-nsa

On Tuesday afternoon, a handful of US Representatives will convene to review an amendment that would reauthorize warrantless foreign surveillance and expand the law so that it could include American citizens. It would, in effect, legalize a surveillance practice abandoned by the NSA in 2017 in order to appease the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which found the NSA to have abused its collection capacity several times. If it passes Tuesday’s review, the bill may be voted on by the US House of Representatives as early as Thursday.

Drafted by the House Intelligence Committee last December, the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017 is an amendment to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). It is one of six different FISA-related bills under consideration by Congress at the moment, but by far the most damaging to the privacy rights of American citizens.