[Congressional Bills 118th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 577 Introduced in House (IH)]
<DOC>
118th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. RES. 577
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that authorities
under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978
should be allowed to expire.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
July 11, 2023
Mr. Gaetz (for himself, Ms. Greene of Georgia, Mr. Gosar, Mr. Massie,
Mr. Crane, Mr. Rosendale, Mr. Biggs, and Mrs. Luna) submitted the
following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the
Judiciary, and in addition to the Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence, for a period to be subsequently determined by the
Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall
within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned
_______________________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that authorities
under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978
should be allowed to expire.
Whereas section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50
U.S.C. 1881a) was added by the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (Public Law
110-261; 122 Stat. 2438);
Whereas the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017 extended section 702
authorities until December 31, 2023;
Whereas absent congressional action, section 702 authorities will sunset at the
end of the year;
Whereas the Intelligence Community has not been forthright about its use of
section 702 authorities over the 15 years that section 702 has been
authorized;
Whereas both Houses of Congress have repeatedly sought to exercise their
constitutional, article I authority to conduct oversight of executive
branch use of section 702 authorities, and the Department of Justice,
including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), has repeatedly and
over multiple Congresses, failed to produce lawfully requested documents
and witnesses to both Houses of Congress;
Whereas what information Congress has related to section 702 authorities is
often obtained from news reports, whistleblower materials, and even when
produced is often heavily redacted;
Whereas what data Congress have on section 702 practice are often incomplete, in
part due to the Department of Justice itself failing for 21 months to
comply with the plain language of section 112 of the FISA Amendments
Reauthorization Act of 2017, mandating that the agency keep a count of
its section 702 queries of United States person data, until two Federal
courts held that they were required to do so;
Whereas this Congress is aware of multiple abuses of the section 702 data
collection process through released court decisions and aggregated data,
which in itself is an adequate basis to sunset the program;
Whereas the National Security Agency acquires more than 250,000,000 internet
communications every year pursuant to section 702;
Whereas the FBI itself has conducted 702 queries with callous disregard of the
privacy rights of Americans, as evidenced by a redacted Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) opinion of April 21, 2022,
including--
(1) by conducting queries using 6,800 Social Security numbers;
(2) by running a batch query in June 2020 of unminimized FISA
information using identifiers of 133 individuals arrested ``in connection
with civil unrest and protests between approximately May 30, and June 18,
2020'' without ``any specific potential connections to terrorist related
activity'' known to those who conducted the queries;
(3) by conducting a batch query for over 19,000 donors to a
congressional campaign;
(4) by ``regularly'' querying queried unminimized FISA information
using identifiers of individuals listed in local police homicide reports,
including victims, family members, witnesses, and suspects with no evidence
of criminal activity;
(5) by conducting batch queries consisting of 23,132 separate queries,
using presumed United States-person query terms, and running said queries
against unminimized section 702 information, although the FBI analyst
conducting the queries had no indications of foreign influence related to
the query terms used; and
(6) by conducting ``in excess'' of 278,000 noncompliant queries of raw
FISA-acquired information;
Whereas that FISC court opinion concluded that ``[a]cross the FBI, the
government has reported queries of raw FISA-acquired information as `a
part of routine baseline checks in order to determine whether there was
any information regarding the subject [of the query] in FBI holdings,'
without a specific factual basis to believe the query was reasonably
likely to return foreign intelligence information or evidence of a
crime.'';
Whereas current oversight work of the 118th Congress does evidence that this
pattern of abuses, in particular by the FBI, are not incidental, but
rather a pattern of behavior warranting the sunset of section 702;
Whereas even FISC Judge James E. Boasberg in a 2018 ruling observed that a
``large number of [702] queries evidence[ed] a misunderstanding of the
querying standard--or indifference toward it'';
Whereas numerous American intelligence, law enforcement, academic, and civil
liberties groups have expressed sustained concern over the law and
practice of section 702 collection;
Whereas there is no indication that traditional FISA authorizations, requiring a
warrant, are not up to the task of protecting American national security
while also protecting American civil liberties;
Whereas traditional FISA authorities are more protective of American civil
liberties, including--
(1) by requiring close involvement of article III judges;
(2) by requiring approval both of the Attorney General and a judge;
(3) by requiring an attestation that ordinary methods of information
collection would not work, prior to having a warrant approved; and
(4) by having time limits on surveillance; and
Whereas no government component has ever provided evidence that section 702 has
produced better outcomes than traditional FISA: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that
the authorities under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act of 1978 should be allowed to expire at the end of this
calendar year.
<all>