Bipartisan bill seeks to protect Americans from warrantless government surveillance

Sens. Wyden, Udall, Paul, And Blumenthal.
(Image credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) are expected to introduce bipartisan legislation Tuesday to prohibit warrantless searches of digital surveillance of Americans collected incidentally via Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

The information in question is data swept up in the process of FISA spying on foreigners located outside the United States. The content about Americans is saved, and that database is then available for warrantless searches by federal agents investigating matters unconnected to the original spying goal.

This type of FISA surveillance is what President Trump clumsily accused the Obama administration of using on Trump Tower during the 2016 election. Experts say it is plausible the feds "may have come upon Trump Tower phone calls if a targeted foreign agent was on the other end of the line" and that agent was subject to FISA spying.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Section 702 is due to expire at the end of this year, and the Senate will also hold closed-door committee hearings Tuesday about a measure to reauthorize it. Paul and Wyden argue a straight reauthorization will perpetuate grave civil liberties abuses in violation of the Fourth Amendment. "This legislation will have enormous impact on the security, liberty, and constitutional rights of the American people," Wyden wrote Monday. "The public has therefore taken a keen interest in the outcome of this mark-up and in specific proposed reforms to Section 702."

Explore More
Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.