Several US Democratic and Republican Senators introduced the Government Surveillance Reform Act of 2023 on Tuesday in an effort to protect Americans’ privacy from government surveillance. The bill aims to establish better national security protections for people who may have had their information unknowingly collected by government agencies such as the FBI and National Security Agency (NSA). The bill reforms section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to prevent warrantless searches, ensures foreigners are not targeted for spying on Americans they communicate with and prevents the collection of domestic communications.
The bill summary claims that as the FISA has grown due to new technology, the FBI and NSA “have conducted millions of warrantless searches of Americans’ communications, resulting in extensive documented abuses.” The bill purports to protect national security “by ensuring US government surveillance of Americans takes place under a consistent, Congressionally-enacted legal framework, supervised by independent judges.”
US Senator Ron Wyden said, “[F]or too long surveillance laws have not kept up with changing times…Our bill continues to give government agencies broad authority to collect information on threats at home and abroad…[b]ut it creates much stronger protections for the privacy of law-abiding Americans”.
More than a dozen senators have sponsored this bill along with numerous organizations. The bill has been coined as “the most comprehensive and balanced government surveillance legislation in years.”
FISA was first introduced after the infamous Watergate scandal. It was aimed to “allow the government to collect foreign intelligence information involving communications with ‘agents of foreign powers.'” The USA Patriot Act, which was shortly enacted after the 9/11 attacks, expanded FISA to allow the collection of Americans’ personal records.
Section 702 of FISA is set to expire at the end of this year. This bill, if it were to be adopted, would renew the seciton for four more years with the added securities and provisions.
