The looming expiration of Section 702, a law enabling government agencies’ ability to collect communication data from targeted foreign entities but has consistently been shown to be used against US citizens, has sparked conflict between groups looking to maintain it and privacy activists who view the law as a circumvention of the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement for searches of American citizens’ communications.

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.