Extending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) until the early months of 2024 without reform will effectively extend surveillance activities into 2025, Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) told Breitbart News.
“The danger in the four-month extension is that as written, what I’ll call a ‘clean’ four-month extension allows the FISA court to grant yet another set of year-long inquiries before the expiration of that clean extension, which basically would continue the program without reform into 2025,” he said. “I think that’s wrong.”
Senate and House conferees attached a so-called short-term FISA extension to the unrelated National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Yet FISA courts can authorize year-long surveillance activities up until the program expires, with those activities continuing for a year even if the program is no longer authorized.
Harris says no short-term extension should be considered unless it is truly short-term.
“If we’re gonna do an extension, it should make it clear that after that date, all FISA functions have to stop,” he said. “Because right now, you’re allowed one year once the FISA Court decides that you’re going to collect data.
“We can’t allow the court, just before the expiration of this extension, to grant another year extension of these authorities, because then you’ll have another year with no reform.”
The House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, which share jurisdiction of FISA courts, are advancing two competing bills to reauthorize FISA. The Judiciary bill is considered to contain broader reforms to the controversial surveillance program.
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House Committee on the Judiciary / YouTubeIn a contentious House Republican Conference meeting held Monday specifically to discuss FISA, Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-OH), claimed that the Judiciary bill, the Protect Liberty and End Warrantless Surveillance Act, would eliminate provisions that the government uses to go after child pornographers.
Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH), a Jordan ally and privacy advocate, said Turner was “fucking lying.”
After the fireworks, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) Monday pulled the two competing bills from floor consideration this week. The program’s authorization expires at the end of 2023.
Harris said the House should continue working through the issue instead of effectively continuing surveillance programs until 2025 without popular reforms.
“We have — we have two products that came out of the House,” he said. “I think you should just bring them to the floor through regular order, bring one of the bills to the floor and allow amendments.”
“That’s not going to happen this week,” he lamented. “I would hope that after the holidays that we do something like that.”
The House and Senate are each expected to vote on the NDAA conference report with the FISA extension Wednesday.
Bradley Jaye is a Capitol Hill Correspondent for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter at @BradleyAJaye.
