Washington, DC—Today, U.S. Representative John Rose (TN-06) voted ‘No’ on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2024, the bill that authorizes programs for the United States’ national defense, Defense Department, and related programs.
The NDAA for Fiscal Year 2024 included a poison pill provision that granted an extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) without reforms through April 19, 2024, ostensibly extending the program for 18 months until April 19, 2025, since existing statutory “transition procedures” allow certification for surveillance to continue for a year from the date the Foreign Surveillance Court issues certification for surveillance.
Rep. Rose released the following statement:
“In what has become a typical Christmas tradition in Washington, Congress couldn’t resist its desire to attach an extremely unpopular program to a piece of must-pass legislation,” said Rep. Rose. “It’s shameful. Because of this backroom deal, Americans’ constitutional right to privacy will continue to be trampled on. Although I support several provisions in this NDAA, like the much-needed pay raise for our troops that I previously voted for back in July, I could not support this bill because of the inclusion of such an egregious and flagrant poison pill that violates our constitutional principles.”
On November 29th, Representative Rose signed a letter to Congressional leadership along with 53 Members of Congress—on both sides of the aisle—demanding a clean extension of Section 702 of FISA to not be attached to the NDAA. The letter said, “A temporary extension would be entirely unnecessary, and it would be an inexcusable violation of the public’s trust to quietly greenlight an authority that has been flagrantly abused.”
Rep. Rose voted for the House-passed NDAA in July, which included a 5.2% pay increase for servicemembers and numerous provisions to counter China’s aggression and halt woke social and diversity initiatives at the Department of Defense.
Background:
In 2008, Congress enacted Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a critical intelligence collection authority that enables the Intelligence Community to collect, analyze, and appropriately share foreign intelligence information about national security threats. Section 702 authorizes targeted intelligence collection of specific types of foreign intelligence information—such as information concerning international terrorism or the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction—identified by the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence. For more information, read here.
However, Section 702 of FISA has been widely abused to target U.S. citizens. Intelligence agencies have used legal loopholes to turn Section 702 into a go-to domestic spying authority, using it to conduct hundreds of thousands of warrantless ‘backdoor’ searches for Americans’ private communications every year—including members of the 2016 Trump campaign team.
Section 702 of FISA, which technically expires on December 31st, 2023, will remain valid until April 11, 2024, due to ongoing litigation; therefore, this short-term extension is entirely unnecessary.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://johnrose.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-rose-denounces-using-ndaa-vehicle-warrantlessly-spy-americans