House majority leader Steve Scalise and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries did not respond to WIRED's requests for comment, nor did any senior members of the House and Senate armed services committees. Republican staffers tell WIRED that extending the 702 program in this manner will almost certainly ignite another major quarrel in the House, where Republicans with considerable sway-including Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Matt Gaetz, who successfully ousted former House speaker Kevin McCarthy in October-are fiercely opposed to reauthorizing the program without a slew of new privacy safeguards. An unlikely coalition of Republican and Democratic lawmakers was formed this year to oppose the intelligence community's effort to obtain a clean reauthorization of the 702 program, which has been plagued by years of internal abuse at the National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation. The program's critics have put up a laundry list of potential reforms, many of which are vehemently opposed by the White House and intelligence community at large. A chief demand of the Republicans, for example, has been to automatically strip the security clearance of any federal employee caught abusing 702 data. A source familiar with the White House's goals for the program tells WIRED it has encouraged Congress throughout the year to discuss potential privacy-enhancing reforms, while drawing a "Red line" at demanding that the FBI obtain warrants before accessing raw 702 data for national security investigations. The source adds that the White House would be open to discussing a warrant requirement for domestic criminal investigations, a recommendation made earlier this year by the president's own intelligence advisory board. Oversight officials on the congressional intelligence committees did not respond on Monday to inquiries from WIRED. A Democratic spokesperson for the House Intelligence Committee said its ranking member, Jim Himes, was unable to comment, but says a failure to reauthorize Section 702 by year's end would prove to be a "Disaster for national security" and a lost opportunity for meaningful reform.
This Cyber News was published on www.wired.com. Publication date: Thu, 30 Nov 2023 23:19:27 +0000