{"id":233585,"date":"2026-04-17T13:31:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T17:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/17\/the-surveillance-law-congress-cant-quit-and-cant-explain\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T20:05:49","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T00:05:49","slug":"the-surveillance-law-congress-cant-quit-and-cant-explain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/17\/the-surveillance-law-congress-cant-quit-and-cant-explain\/","title":{"rendered":"The surveillance law Congress can&#8217;t quit \u2014 and can&#8217;t explain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cyberscoop.com\/section-702-fisa-surveillance-law-renewal-congress-debate\/\">The surveillance law Congress can&#8217;t quit \u2014 and can&#8217;t explain<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cyberscoop.com\/section-702-fisa-surveillance-law-renewal-congress-debate\/\">https:\/\/cyberscoop.com\/section-702-fisa-surveillance-law-renewal-congress-debate\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-04-17 13:31:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"cyberscoop.com\">cyberscoop.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Congress is grappling with renewal of a surveillance law set to expire at the end of this month that critics say is a mystery on how much of a difference it has made for controversial government spying authorities \u2014 for better or worse.<\/p>\n<p>The 2024 law reauthorized so-called Section 702 powers of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which authorizes warrantless surveillance of electronic communications of foreign targets. Most controversially, the law allows U.S. officials to search (\u201cquery\u201d) those communications databases using Americans\u2019 personal information, as long as the American is\u00a0 in contact with someone overseas, which raises significant privacy concerns.<\/p>\n<p>Backers of the 2024 law, known as the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act (RISAA), point to 56 changes it made to deal with criticisms of Section 702, following a period where abuses came to light, including hundreds of thousands of improper searches. At the same time, the law made changes that some feared could actually expand Section 702 powers.<\/p>\n<p>The House voted to extend the law as-is for 10 days early Friday. The Senate then did the same. The Trump administration has sought a 180-day \u201cclean\u201d reauthorization.<\/p>\n<p>As Congress weighs potential extensions of the 2024 law without making changes to it, \u201cI don\u2019t think we know\u201d what good has come of it, said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice\u2019s liberty and national security program. By the same token, it\u2019s difficult to know whether some of the expansion fears have come to fruition, she said: \u201cWe don\u2019t have reliable information on this.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Added Jake Laperruque of the Center for Democracy and Technology: \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of black boxes here.\u201d<\/p>\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-examining-past-changes\">Examining Past Changes<\/h4>\n<p>Both Goitein and Laperruque are skeptical of any positive change from RISAA, though, and have long advocated for a warrant requirement for U.S. person searches. Intelligence agencies&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cyberscoop.com\/section-702-fisa-surveillance-law-renewal-congress-debate\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The surveillance law Congress can&#8217;t quit \u2014 and can&#8217;t explain https:\/\/cyberscoop.com\/section-702-fisa-surveillance-law-renewal-congress-debate\/ Publish Date: 2026-04-17 13:31:00&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":233586,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cyberscoop.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2270265643.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-233585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233585"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233585"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":233587,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233585\/revisions\/233587"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}