Admin Presses for Renewal of FISA Surveillance Authority
The Obama Administration is urging Congress to renew provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act that are set to expire at the end of this year.
“Reauthorizing this authority is the top legislative priority of the Intelligence Community,” wrote Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Attorney General Eric Holder in a February 8 letter to Congress.
One of the key provisions, they explained, would permit the electronic surveillance of entire categories of non-U.S. persons who are located abroad “without the need for a court order for each individual target.”
Under this provision, “instead of issuing individual court orders, the FISC [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] approves annual certifications submitted by the Attorney General and the DNI that identify categories of foreign intelligence targets.”
“The provision contains a number of important protections for U.S. persons and others in the United States,” according to a background paper attached to the February 8 letter, including limitations on targeting, minimization procedures to exclude information about U.S. persons, and other guidelines on acquisition.
“Failure to reauthorize [this section] would result in a loss of significant intelligence and impede the ability of the Intelligence Community to respond quickly to new threats and intelligence opportunities,” the background paper stated.
Proposed legislative language to enact an extension of Title VII of the FISA Amendments Act was transmitted to Congress by the DNI in a March 26 letter.
The American Civil Liberties Union disputes the adequacy of the FISA Amendment Act’s protections for U.S. persons and is challenging the constitutionality of the Act in a lawsuit that is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. The ACLU is also asking Congress to “Fix FISA by prohibiting dragnet surveillance, mandating more transparency about the government’s surveillance activities, and strengthening safeguards for privacy.”
The Federation of American Scientists supports H.R. 4420, the Cool Corridors Act of 2025, which would reauthorize the Healthy Streets program through 2030 and seeks to increase green and other shade infrastructure in high-heat areas.
The current lack of public trust in AI risks inhibiting innovation and adoption of AI systems, meaning new methods will not be discovered and new benefits won’t be felt. A failure to uphold high standards in the technology we deploy will also place our nation at a strategic disadvantage compared to our competitors.
Using the NIST as an example, the Radiation Physics Building (still without the funding to complete its renovation) is crucial to national security and the medical community. If it were to go down (or away), every medical device in the United States that uses radiation would be decertified within 6 months, creating a significant single point of failure that cannot be quickly mitigated.
The federal government can support more proactive, efficient, and cost-effective resiliency planning by certifying predictive models to validate and publicly indicate their quality.