Four Senate and House lawmakers have introduced a bipartisan bill that would reauthorize for four years the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s Section 702 provision and establish accountability measures and protections to prevent warrantless searches and other forms of surveillance abuse.
Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Mike Lee, R-Utah introduced the Government Surveillance Reform Act with Reps. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, and Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.
“Our bill continues to give government agencies broad authority to collect information on threats at home and abroad, including the ability to act quickly in emergencies and settle up with the court later. But it creates much stronger protections for the privacy of law-abiding Americans, and restores the warrant protections that are at the heart of the Fourth Amendment,” Wyden said in a statement published Tuesday.
The proposed Government Surveillance Reform Act would protect U.S. citizens from warrantless backdoor searches, limit the acquisition of information on Americans as part of large datasets and require warrants for government purchases of private data of Americans from private brokers and for surveillance of citizens’ web browsing, location data and search records.
The legislation would also prohibit the targeting of foreigners as a pretext for surveilling Americans and would include exceptions to ensure that the U.S. government can continue to use the Section 702 authority for defensive cybersecurity purposes.
