House Intelligence Committee’s Section 702 Bill: Surveillance Expansion and No Meaningful Reform

On Jan 11, the House of Representatives will likely vote on a stand-alone measure to reauthorize and expand Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is set to expire on January 19, 2018. The bill to be voted on is a modified version of the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017 (H.R. 4478; now S. 139), which was reported out of the House Intelligence Committee on a party line vote, with at least four members voting “no” because of privacy concerns. The Open Technology Institute and a coalition of dozens of leading privacy groups strongly oppose the bill. The modifications to this bill reflected in the draft posted to the House Rules website are wholly insufficient to address the many concerns it raises. Although its proponents seek to sell the bill as a reform measure, it contains no meaningful reforms to Section 702, and in several respects, it expands surveillance authorities and codifies the worst intelligence community practices rather than reforming them. As a result, this bill is worse than a clean reauthorization with a sunset.