Lawmakers secure 10-day extension to push for Section 702 surveillance reform

A bipartisan group of lawmakers has secured a 10-day extension to continue pushing for reforms to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which authorizes mass surveillance programs. The lawmakers rejected a proposed amendment late Thursday night that would have reauthorized Section 702 for five more years with only minimal privacy protections. They are holding out for at least a requirement of probable cause warrants for FBI access to information collected under the program. Section 702 allows the National Security Agency to collect full conversations conducted by and with targets overseas, including communications involving Americans in the U.S. The NSA stores this information in massive databases that other agencies, including the FBI, can access without warrants. Senator Ron Wyden has raised concerns about a "secret interpretation" of the law that enables surveillance of Americans and has documented FBI abuse of Section 702. Wyden noted that victims of this surveillance typically have no way of knowing their communications have been monitored. "In many cases these will be law-abiding Americans having perfectly legitimate, often sensitive, conversations," Wyden wrote. "These Americans could include journalists, foreign aid workers, people with family members overseas - even women trying to get abortion medication from an overseas provider." Civil liberties advocates argue the current system allows the FBI to take a "finders keepers" approach to data collected under Section 702, reasoning that since it is already collected under one law, it is acceptable for them to access it without additional oversight. The 10-day extension provides additional time for Congress to consider reforms that would require warrants for accessing Americans' communications and increase transparency around surveillance activities.