By Steve Neavling
Republican angry with the FBI could help end the bureau’s use of a controversial surveillance tool used to gather phone calls and text messages of foreign targets overseas.
The FBI uses the warrantless surveillance to stop overseas hackers, spy services and terrorists.
The law that legalized the program, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is set to expire, and Republicans who championed it are now pledging to allow it to expire in December, The New York Times reports.
“There’s no way we’re going to be for reauthorizing that in its current form — no possible way,” said U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said. “We’re concerned about surveillance, period.”
Since it was renewed in 2018, the FBI has admitted that its agent improperly used Section 702 to investigate Americans.
Republican support for the surveillance tool is important because Democrats have long expressed concern that Section 702 could violate Americans’ civil liberties.
“You couldn’t waterboard me into voting to reauthorize 702,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who supported the program in 2018. “These 702 authorities were abused against people in Washington on January 6 and they were abused against people who were affiliated with the B.L.M. movement, and I’m equally aggrieved by both of those things.”
Last month, the Biden administration declassified intelligence to reveal how the surveillance tool has been used to address fentanyl trafficking, foreign cyberattacks and China’s prosecution of dissidents.
