Surveillance reforms will have to wait

The House this week again delayed a vote on a bill to curb government snooping on Americans’ private communications.

“Simply put, anonymous bureaucrats have abused this tool to that was intended for foreign surveillance of threats to spy on American citizens,” Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., the chairman of the conservative the House Freedom Caucus, said at a news conference on Tuesday. “You often hear people joking about the government spying on us. But sadly, that is true.”

On Monday, House Republicans unveiled a bill to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, setting the stage to rework the controversial spy tool’s structure in the near future. But by Wednesday, divisions had emerged over how best to amend powers granted by the law. Lawmakers were preparing to vote on the bill on Wednesday when Raj Shah, a spokesman for House Speaker Mike Johnson, announced that the speaker had decided to delay.

“In order to allow Congress more time to reach consensus on how best to reform FISA and section 702 while maintaining the integrity of our critical national security programs, the House will consider the reform and reauthorization bill at a later date,” Shah posted to X, formerly known as Twitter.

Under its current framework, FISA section 702 allows the government to recover private data and communications without a warrant. But it only applies to foreign actors—and only when they are suspected of presenting a credible threat to the United States.

A report from the House Judiciary Committee late last year detailed how a lack of training, oversight, and restraint led to a wide range of abuses. In one case, the FBI requested information on 19,000 donors of a congressional campaign while only eight of the targets had relevant ties to international actors. Another report by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board found that the FBI and National Security Agency conducted tens of thousands of baseless searches related to domestic civil unrest and 2,000 queries for the names and dates of birth of individuals registered “in an athletic event.” In two cases, an analyst filed queries about acquaintances met via an online dating service.

In December, Republicans in the House proposed two bills: one that significantly limited the power of Section 702 and another that marginally tweaked the existing authority of the statute. Both sought to address the track record of abuse in recent years, but both went nowhere amid Republican party divisions. Johnson decided to push a deadline to renew FISA to April. Two months later, those divisions persist.

The proposed fix, a combination of both GOP bills, would stiffen penalties for misusing the power of Section 702—up to eight years behind bars—and require additional layers of approval for queries into religious or political figures. It would also set new standards for record keeping and better define the acceptable circumstances of a query. The bill reauthorizes FISA for the next four years, sunsetting in 2028.

The more conservative members of the House and many Democrats have condemned the measures as weak. They want to see something that more closely resembles the more restrictive bill, which the House Judiciary Committee proposed.

“The Judiciary bill is the superior bill,” Good said on Tuesday. “It appropriately protects the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens and puts a premium on the protection of the freedoms that our country’s founding documents guarantee to our citizens.” Good said if the Judiciary bill does not advance, the newer version presented Monday needs amendments.

Specifically, Republicans are looking for two amendments to the existing language. First, they want to add warrant requirements to any kind of Section 702 query, a standard that opponents say defeats the purpose of the tool and would severely restrict the intelligence community. Secondly, Republicans want to expressly forbid the intelligence community from purchasing data from companies, something that would effectively circumvent limitations on data-collection practices.

For now, amid the divisions on the bill, there’s a notable missing piece of the puzzle: the House speaker’s input.

In December, Johnson received criticism for failing to take a stance on one bill or the other. Instead, he chose to push for an extension of the bill and give the Republican conference time to work out its differences. Johnson remains largely silent on FISA.

I pressed Good on what communications, if any, Johnson had made about FISA to his own party. Good expressed that Johnson doesn’t feel pressed for time. The House has until April. And despite admitting that he was in regular communications with the speaker over the matter, Good declined to give away Johnson’s position.

“I’m not going to talk about what he’s saying in those meetings,” Good said.