Lawmakers reached a tentative agreement to temporarily extend one of the FBI’s most controversial surveillance tools, giving Congress more time to figure out what to do with the program.
FBI Director Christopher Wray urged a Senate committee on Tuesday to reauthorize one of the bureau’s most controversial surveillance tools, invoking the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and saying the spy program is “indispensable to our threats posed by foreign adversaries.”
One of the FBI’s most controversial surveillance tools faces serious impediments after a sharply divided privacy oversight board recommended making it more difficult to gather data.
An advisory board to President Biden recommended further restrictions on the FBI’s ability to access surveillance data to search for information about Americans, but still encouraged lawmakers to renew the law that authorizes it.
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.
