Warnings Mount in Congress Over Expanded US Wiretap Powers

Experts tell US lawmakers that a crucial spy program’s safeguards are failing, allowing intel agencies deeper, unconstrained access to Americans’ data.

Privacy and surveillance experts and United States lawmakers from both parties on Thursday warned that the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s continued access to Americans’ communications without a warrant under a controversial surveillance law risks turning a foreign intelligence tool into a standing engine for domestic spying.

Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, four witnesses—a former US attorney, a conservative litigator, a civil liberties advocate, and a tech-policy analyst—urged Congress to impose a probable-cause warrant requirement on searches of a vast government database built under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)—or allow the authority to expire when it comes up again for reauthorization this spring.