Congress passes NDAA Extending Illegal FBI Surveillance Of American Citizens
On Thursday, Congress voted overwhelmingly to pass the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which has controversially allowed an extension to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), allowing continued unwarranted surveillance of American citizens’ communication.
In an over two-thirds majority, the House passed the NDAA in a 310-118 vote, as Congress is now set to go on a three week holiday vacation. The $886 billion defense policy bill, a three percent increase from last year, includes annual military spending and continued aid for Ukraine and is set to be signed into law by President Joe Biden.
Many Americans are voicing their displeasure about the bill passing, pointing to newly-elected speaker, Mike Johnson, for allowing the four-month extension of Section 702, that was set to expire on December 31st of this year, to be tied into the now passed NDAA.
“FISA section 702 gets a clean 4-month renewal and the FBI can continue surveilling Americans without a warrant. Corruption wins. The Constitution loses. Again,” Charlie Kirk wrote shortly after the vote.
According to Defense One, “Section 702 allows the government to target any foreigner abroad for warrantless surveillance to obtain ‘foreign intelligence information.” International targets of the US government, don’t need to have ties to criminal organizations or terrorism and intelligence agencies have used this loophole as a way to spy on the communication of American citizens utilizing their communication with these foreign targets.
Many have called Section 702 an attack on our fourth amendment right which is supposed to constitutionally protect people from, “unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.” Many Republicans have been called out for voting in favor of passing the NDAA, such as Senator Ted Cruz and Speaker Mike Johnson.
Alongside the extension of this illegal government surveillance on American citizens, the bill also includes an emergency spending request of $300 million to the “Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative” program into 2026. This comes alongside the over $60 billion that has already been sent overseas to Ukraine since February of 2022.
