The House on Thursday passed a short-term extension of a key surveillance power, sending it to the White House just hours before it is set to expire at midnight.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The bill, which would extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act through June 12, passed amid bitter disagreements over a longer-term extension.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Senate passed the short-term extension\u00a0via voice vote hardly an hour before the House took it up under suspension of the rules, which requires a two-thirds majority. The final tally was 261-111.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t like kicking the can down the road. Not my jam, but that\u2019s where we are,\u201d Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Thursday after the vote. \u201cHopefully the House will be able to agree to this, and then we\u2019ll get to work in earnest and try [to] find something that actually enables us to do a long-term extension of the authorization.\u201d<\/p>\n
Section 702 allows the U.S. government to collect digital communications of foreigners located outside the country. But the program is controversial because it also sweeps up the communications of Americans and allows the FBI to search through data without a warrant, using information such as an email address.<\/p>\n
The controversy doesn\u2019t necessarily fall along party lines. A handful of Republicans and Democrats refuse to reauthorize the program without a warrant requirement, while others argue the power is important enough for a quick, \u201cclean\u201d extension of the program as is.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sad thing is, this could have been done weeks ago,\u201d said Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. \u201cIf you are catering to your extreme the way the speaker has done for the last week, month and year, you\u2019re not going to get this done.\u201d<\/p>\n
The House passed its version of the spy powers reauthorization bill 235-191 on Wednesday with some privacy provisions \u2014 but not a warrant requirement\u2014 and attached language that also would prohibit the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency.<\/p>\n
Thune has said the bill with the currency provision, fueled by privacy concerns associated with the technology, would be dead on arrival in the Senate.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The extension didn\u2019t have such an easy path in the House as it did in the Senate. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said prior to the vote that he would block any efforts to pass it via unanimous consent or voice vote.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cRather than even debate it, Leader Thune went to the floor and said, \u2018No respect. Not even going to give it the time of day,\u2019\u201d said Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, said of the House version of the FISA bill. \u201cThe Senate sent over something to say, \u2018Let\u2019s just keep the status quo going \u2026.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Thune said the short-term extension would allow for overhaul conversations to continue without the program going dark, and \u201cpretty substantial dialogue\u201d is happening between Senate Intelligence Committee leaders Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Mark Warner, D-Va., and their counterparts in the House.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to make sure that the program works, enables them to [have] the tools to acquire the necessary intelligence to keep the country safe,\u201d Thune said. \u201cBut we\u2019re also interested in looking at some ways in which it can be reformed along the lines that some of the folks who have ideas about that want.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ryan Tarinelli and Nina Heller contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The House on Thursday passed a short-term extension of a key surveillance power, sending it to the White…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[142],"tags":[16968,16204,477,1408,31793,486,16969,1066,21559,2563,961,1069,29979,475,747,8355,3789,1076,494,1077,584,13300,2878,1287,987],"class_list":{"0":"post-51621","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-john-thune","8":"tag-arkansas","9":"tag-bank","10":"tag-congress","11":"tag-connecticut","12":"tag-dead","13":"tag-democrats","14":"tag-department-of-veterans-affairs","15":"tag-executive-branch","16":"tag-federal-bureau-of-investigations","17":"tag-federal-reserve","18":"tag-house","19":"tag-intelligence","20":"tag-jim-himes","21":"tag-john-thune","22":"tag-kentucky","23":"tag-mark-warner","24":"tag-ohio","25":"tag-republicans","26":"tag-senate","27":"tag-south-dakota","28":"tag-technology","29":"tag-thomas-massie","30":"tag-tom-cotton","31":"tag-virginia","32":"tag-white-house"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116496456968592702","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51621","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=51621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}