WASHINGTON — Federal spy agencies should be required to get court approval before reviewing the communications of U.S. citizens collected through a secretive foreign surveillance program, a sharply divided privacy oversight board recommended on Thursday.
The recommendation came in a report from a three-member Democratic majority of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent agency within the executive branch, and was made despite the opposition of Biden administration officials who warn that such a requirement could snarl fast-moving terrorism and espionage investigations and weaken national security as a result.
The report comes as a White House push to secure the reauthorization of the program known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is encountering major bipartisan opposition in Congress and during a spate of revelations that FBI employees have periodically mishandled access to a repository of intelligence gathered under the law, violations that have spurred outrage from civil liberties advocates.
Section 702 permits allow spy agencies without a warrant to collect swaths of emails and other communications from foreigners located abroad, even when those foreigners are in touch with people in the United States.
Officials in President Joe Biden’s administration have said the program is essential for disrupting foreign terror attacks, espionage operations from Russia and China and cyberattacks against critical infrastructure. But many Democratic and Republican lawmakers say they won’t vote to renew Section 702 when it expires at the end of the year without major changes targeting how the FBI uses foreign surveillance data to investigate Americans.
The privacy board recommended that the program be renewed despite being divided about what reforms were needed.
The opposition to reauthorization has united unusual bedfellows, bringing together civil liberties-minded Democrats who have long supported limits on government surveillance powers with Republicans still angry over what they see as abuses during the investigation into ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
A central point of contention is analysts’ use of the foreign intelligence database to search for information about people, businesses or phone numbers located in the U.S. Those queries are permissible if there’s reason to believe they will retrieve foreign intelligence information. The FBI can also search the database if it believes it will turn up evidence of a crime, though a court order is required to review the results of those queries.