Daniel Boguslaw, James Baratta:
This week, the Congressional Black Caucus will quietly support an effort to reauthorize surveillance powers that were used to spy on Black Lives Matter activists in 2020, the Prospect has learned. According to multiple congressional sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity, CBC support for the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) comes after Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the powerful ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, successfully lobbied CBC leadership to stand down on reforming the vast intelligence authority.
Section 702 grants U.S. intelligence agencies the authority to collect communications data on foreign intelligence targets abroad. In practice, however, it has allowed those agencies to amass troves of data on American citizens. The National Security Agency (NSA) is one of many FISA authorities with warrantless accessto Americans’ communications data, which the agency has been known to purchase from U.S.-based companies.
Privacy advocates like the Brennan Center for Justice contend that the intelligence community’s efforts to reduce the number of U.S. person queries completed under Section 702 only reflect known searches, as the FBI has “neither tracked nor audited these queries as required by law.”
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In the wake of the 2013 Snowden reporting, the House had a bill co-sponsored by John Conyers (D-MI) and Justin Amash (R-MI) to rein in NSA spying on Americans. It was on its way to passage– the first time since 9/11 USG powers would have been reduced — but Obama got Nancy Pelosi to whip Dem votes against it, and so it failed by a few votes.
Since then, Mike Johnson and now the Congressional Black Congress have acted to ensure that the NSA’s domestic spying powers under FISA 702 continue with no reforms or safeguards. In other words, Dem call Trump Hitler but even the CBC works to ensure there are no limits on the NSA’s domestic spying power under him.