The Intelligence Committees’ Proposals for a 702 Reauthorization Bill are Beyond Bad

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Both congressional intelligence committees have now released proposals for reauthorizing the government’s Section 702 spying powers, largely as-is, and in the face of repeated abuse. 

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) in the U.S. House of Representatives released a Nov. 16 report calling for reauthorization, which includes an outline of the legislation to do so. According to the report, the bill would renew the mass surveillance authority Section 702 and, in the process, invokes a litany of old boogeymen to justify why the program should continue to collect U.S. persons’ communications when they talk with people abroad.

As a reminder, the program was intended to collect communications of people outside of the United States, but because we live in an increasingly globalized world, the government intercepts and retains a massive trove of communications between Americans and people overseas. Increasingly, it’s this U.S. side of digital conversations that domestic law enforcement agencies trawl through—all without a warrant.

Private communications are the cornerstone of a free society.

It’s an old tactic. People in the intelligence community chafe against any proposals that would cut back on their “collect it all” mentality. This leads them to make a habit of finding the most current threat to public safety in order scare the public into pushing for much needed reforms, with terrorism serving as the most consistent justification for mass surveillance. In this document, HPSCI mentions that Section 702 could be the key to fighting: ISIS, Al-Qaeda, MS-13, and fentanyl trafficking. They hope that one, or all, of these threats will resonate with people enough to make them forget that the government has an obligation to honor the priv

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