A brief 10 day stopgap keeps key surveillance powers active, but tense negotiations over privacy and oversight now head to the Senate. Lawmakers face a tight deadline.<\/p>\n
Late Thursday night, the House approved a short-term extension of the critically important foreign intelligence surveillance program after GOP leadership endured a pair of failed votes on long-term reauthorization.<\/p>\n
Under this bill, which would allow reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act through April 30, it now goes to the Senate for consideration; the program would expire in three days.<\/p>\n
Republican leaders believed that on Thursday evening they had reached an agreement with conservative holdouts who have deep and long-standing concerns about whether Section 702 infringes Americans\u2019 privacy. The deal would have provided a five-year extension of the intelligence authorities, but with certain changes to the program.<\/p>\n
Chronicle of events in Congress and party reactions<\/p>\n
The House rejected the substance of the agreement during an earlier vote on Friday \u2013 and later blocked procedural votes on an 18-month, clean extension of the program. At the same time CNN had previously reported, citing current and former officials, that in the days leading up to the deadline, U.S. intelligence agencies were preparing for possible blind spots in the collection of intelligence amid a sensitive cease-fire with Iran.<\/p>\n
The administration of President Donald Trump throughout the week backed a clean extension, and the president himself repeatedly urged Republicans on social media to back the 18-month reauthorization. The party\u2019s leader and the White House were also in lengthy negotiations with conservative holdouts.<\/p>\n
However, these negotiations did not persuade some privacy advocates within the party. The deal being pursued by leaders with holdouts collapsed on the floor of votes, and 20 Republicans later helped block the 18-month clean extension.<\/p>\n
After leaving the chamber on Friday, Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that the 10-day extension would give lawmakers more time to reconcile the differences.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were very close tonight,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cThere are nuances in the wording and some questions that need answering, and we will address them. The extension gives us time for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Johnson<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are many differing views on how to do this, and it\u2019s very hard to get it to perfection, but we will.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Johnson<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we are trying to do is thread the needle \u2013 balancing having this important tool to safeguard Americans\u2019 security while protecting our constitutional rights and making sure that abuses of FISA in the past are no longer possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Johnson<\/p>\n
After all the consideration, the fate of Section 702 remains dependent on further negotiations in the Senate, but for now the focus is on finding common ground and balancing security with Americans\u2019 constitutional rights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A brief 10 day stopgap keeps key surveillance powers active, but tense negotiations over privacy and oversight now…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[143],"tags":[20388,20389,478,50,19360,20390,20387],"class_list":{"0":"post-29680","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mike-johnson","8":"tag-fisa-reauthorization","9":"tag-house-extension","10":"tag-mike-johnson","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-privacy-concerns","13":"tag-section-702","14":"tag-section-702-fisa-reauthorization-house-extension-mike-johnson-privacy-concerns"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116419587292074232","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}