House Republicans are expected to vote on renewing a controversial federal government surveillance tool when they return from recess next week, multiple sources told Fox News Digital.<\/p>\n
Two House GOP aides and a GOP lawmaker \u2013 all who spoke on the condition of anonymity \u2013 said the House could take up Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which is set to expire on April 19 if Congress does not act soon. One of the aides said plans are still fluid.<\/p>\n
Section 702 has been both credited with preventing terror attacks on U.S. soil and accused of being a vehicle for spying on U.S. citizens.<\/p>\n
It lets the government keep tabs on specific foreign nationals outside the country without first obtaining a warrant to do so, even if the party on the other side of those communications is a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil.<\/p>\n
The debate over its renewal has been intense, and it\u2019s made unlikely allies out of hard-liners on the left and right alike over accusations it tramples on Americans\u2019 civil rights. The FBI has been accused of improperly using Section 702 to spy on Black Lives Matter protesters in the summer of 2020 as well as people who rioted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.<\/p>\n
\u2018Freedom surrendered is rarely reclaimed. Next week, Congress once again confronts an opportunity for reform and accountability of [FISA],\u2019 Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, one of the tool\u2019s critics, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u2018Demand a debate and recorded vote to require warrants to search American citizens\u2019 data, to limit the scope of collection, and to stop the government from avoiding warrants by buying data that would require a warrant or subpoena.\u2019<\/p>\n
Section 702\u2019s supporters, which include national security hawks and moderates on both sides, point out that Section 702 is critical to avoiding another Sept. 11, 2001-style attack and have accused its detractors of trying to gut the program to the point of inoperability.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not immediately clear what a FISA renewal would look like \u2013 multiple plans to do so have fallen apart already.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Most recently, a compromise bill put together by negotiators for the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees was abruptly pulled from the House floor schedule after Republicans on the Intelligence panel threatened to tank the legislation.<\/p>\n
Three sources close to the Intelligence Committee told Fox News Digital at the time that it was about an amendment that would have forced law enforcement to seek a warrant before obtaining communications that involved a U.S. citizen.<\/p>\n
\u2018That would be the equivalent of a police officer needing a warrant before running a license plate,\u2019 one of the three sources said.<\/p>\n
Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., who supported the warrant amendment, hit back at the Intelligence Committee\u2019s reform efforts at the time, saying, \u2018Intel didn\u2019t want the Judiciary [amendments]. See, the Judiciary Committee is the committee of jurisdiction. That\u2019s where it should\u2019ve gone.\u2019<\/p>\n
But the third source close to the Intelligence Committee said those on the panel \u2018are the ones that see the threats to our nation up close and personal every day.\u2019<\/p>\n
An earlier proposal to hold votes on dueling bills and send the highest vote-getter to the Senate had also been scrapped. One had been by the House Judiciary Committee, which would have vastly restricted the program, and another by the House Intelligence panel would have made improvements to transparency and accountability pipelines.<\/p>\n
Fox News Digital reached out to Johnson\u2019s office for comment but did not hear back at press time.<\/p>\n\n
House Republicans are expected to vote on renewing a controversial federal government surveillance tool when they return from recess next week, multiple sources told Fox News Digital. Two House GOP aides and a GOP lawmaker \u2013 all who spoke on the condition of anonymity \u2013 said the House could take up Section 702 of the <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":17616,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17615","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}