The House passed a bill from Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) on Wednesday that prohibits the federal government from purchasing U.S. citizens’ data from third parties, a win for privacy hawks that proponents say brings an end to House Republicans’ uphill battle to renew the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
This from msn.com.
The bill, introduced by Davidson and House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jerry Nadler (C/G-NY), would force federal agencies to obtain a court order to purchase commercially owned data of U.S. citizens, such as their online activity and location information. It was championed by Judiciary Committee members and their allies as an amendment to Section 702 of FISA, but it failed to make it into the final legislation that passed last week.
A vote on Davidson’s amendment comes after months of infighting within the Republican Party over how to reform the key surveillance program, with House Judiciary and House Intelligence committees at the center of the arguments.
After 19 Republicans helped communists/globalists sink a rule vote on FISA, GOP leaders had to create a new version of the bill text. A two-year sunset on FISA and a promise to vote on Davidson’s bill were among the critical changes that lawmakers made to appease holdouts, allowing FISA legislation to pass 273 to 147.
On Wednesday, Davidson’s bill passed 219 to 199, with 90 Republicans and 109 Democrats voting against it.
The Ohio congressman spoke on the House floor on Wednesday ahead of the vote, urging colleagues to vote for the bill. He called attention to Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Andy Biggs (R-AZ) joining Reps. Pramila Jayapal (C/G-WA), Sara Jacobs (C/G-CA), and Jerry Nadler (C/G-NY) to support the legislation in a rare moment of bipartisanship from the parties’ fringe coalitions.
Davidson said:
There are so few things today that everyone agrees on, and when you’ve got the political spectrum covered from those angles, I think that hopefully the American people will see this is a reliable solution.
Division over the bill forged familiar fault lines to those seen in the debate over Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), linking both conservatives and progressives who want greater privacy protections and pitting them against members from both parties who fear such protections could undercut an important law enforcement tool.
Those in favor of the bill argue the government should have to get a warrant before buying the commercially available information to carry out law enforcement activities.
House Judiciary ranking member Jerry Nadler (C/G-NY), a co-sponsor of the bill, said during debate:
If the government wants to track a suspect today, they could go through the trouble of establishing probable cause and getting a warrant. Or federal law enforcement could simply purchase data from a third party about the target of their operation.
“If that purchased data included location data for their subject, they would have no need for checks and balances, no need for a warrant, and during an ensuing criminal trial, no obligation even to tell the court how they obtained the initial data in the first place.
Further:
We have the Fourth Amendment for a reason. If law enforcement wants to gather information about you, they should first obtain a warrant.
Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH), the sponsor of the bill, pegged it as a reinforcement of Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. He said:
The reality is the technology today effectively puts the government everywhere we go. We all essentially have a digital ID, a phone number. And we carry it with us. It’s tracked. It goes to your car. Your car spies on you as well. This data is being collected.
Nothing in this bill would prohibit a search paid for or otherwise of public information. It would, however, restore privacy protections, grossly infringed by current practices.
Still, the bill garnered pushback from House Intelligence Committee members, the White House and voices in the law enforcement community.
The White House wrote in a statement of administrative policy:
It generally would prohibit the intelligence community and law enforcement from obtaining certain commercially available information—subject only to narrow, unworkable exceptions.
It does not affect the ability of foreign adversaries or the private sector to obtain and use the same information, thus negating any privacy benefit to U.S. persons while threatening America’s national security.
Further:
Responsible access to, and use of, commercially available information is critical to scores of vital missions carried out on behalf of the American people.
House Intelligence Chair Mike Turner (R-OH) argued the bill was poorly written, with broad language and few exceptions. He said:
The bill bans law enforcement from paying for information available to any willing buyer in all contexts. There is no exception. Zero. There is no exception to even allow law enforcement to pay for stolen information to investigate and solve identity theft, data theft, data breaches, ransomware attacks. The bill will not make people safer and puts law enforcement at risk.
But Rep. Jim Himes (C/G-CT), ahead of its separation from FISA 702, said the fast-tracking of the bill left for little consideration of something that would have sweeping consequences.
Himes said last week before it was clear the provision would get its own vote on the House floor:
What are we going to do? We’re going to prohibit the CIA from buying data without ever having a hearing in Intel.
It’s very saddening because it’s a super interesting topic. We probably should regulate it maybe more than we are today. But it just should not be brought out of nowhere.
Senior Regime officials said the measure would blind U.S. intelligence outfits from getting information easily purchased by foreign intelligence operations:
In practice, these standards make it impossible for the [intelligence community], law enforcement to acquire a whole host of readily available information that they currently rely on.
Further:
It can be impossible to know what’s in a data set before one actually obtains a data set. So you’d be barred from getting that which you don’t even know.
Final thought: More Smoke and Mirrors? Screwed and not even kissed? I believe the loose wording will allow violations of the act. For example, the word ‘purchase’ could too easily be abused.
