Electronic surveillance

Intel leaders urge Congress to reauthorize NSA surveillance program

FBI Director Christopher Wray said Friday that members of Congress who are trying to restrict the bureau's access to information obtained through the monitoring of foreign nationals are jeopardizing national security.

The Section 702 program, first amended to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 2008 and reauthorized in 2012, allows intelligence agencies to legally monitor emails and phone calls of foreign nationals outside of the US and is set to expire at the end of the year.

The Trump administration wants a clean reauthorization of the law, but a bipartisan group in the House judiciary committee wants to force law enforcement agencies like the FBI to obtain a warrant to look at the content of communications returned from a query of the Section 702 database for a criminal investigation.

The names and communications of American citizens are often swept up in the intercepted content, prompting concerns of civil liberty advocates.