Senate intelligence chairman proposes revamp of surveillance program

With the clock ticking toward an end-of-year deadline, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday introduced a bipartisan bill aimed at renewing a powerful but controversial surveillance program — known as Section 702 — that he hopes addresses concerns from fiercely skeptical privacy-minded lawmakers on both ends of the political spectrum without sapping the tool’s usefulness.

The bill sponsored by Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), drafted with input from the Biden administration as well as both leaders of the House Intelligence Committee, would restrict some FBI authority. But in a nod to the spy agencies, it does not go so far as to introduce a requirement that agents obtain a warrant laying out the probable cause to query digital communications, such as emails collected by the National Security Agency for information on U.S. citizens and others legally in the country. National security officials say requiring such a warrant would be an unacceptable limitation because of how much it would gum up vital queries, but civil liberties groups insist it is necessary to protect Americans.

Section 702 is a workhorse surveillance program by which the NSA gathers emails, text messages and the like from U.S.-based tech companies in which a foreigner based overseas is on at least one end of the communication. A small subset of the take is furnished to the FBI for potential use in national security investigations involving espionage, counterterrorism and cyberthreats, officials said.