WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Friday said he signed into law abill renewing the National Security Agency’s (NSA) warrantless internetsurveillance program, sealing a defeat for digital privacy advocates.
“Just signed 702 Bill to reauthorize foreign intelligence collection,”Trump wrote on Twitter, referring to legislation passed by the US Congressthat extends Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act(FISA).
The law renews for six years and with minimal changes the NSA programme,which gathers information from foreigners overseas but incidentallycollects an unknown amount of communications belonging to Americans.
The measure easily passed the US House of Representatives last week despitemixed signals posted on Twitter by Trump and narrowly avoided a filibusterin the Senate earlier this week that split party lines. The measure haddrawn opposition from a coalition of privacy-minded Democrats andlibertarian Republicans.
In his tweet on Friday, Trump attempted to clarify why he signed the billdespite repeating an unsubstantiated claim that his Democratic predecessor,Barack Obama, ordered intelligence agencies to eavesdrop on Trump’s 2016Republican presidential campaign.
“This is NOT the same FISA law that was so wrongly abused during theelection,” Trump wrote. “I will always do the right thing for our countryand put the safety of the American people first!”
Last September, the US Justice Department said in a court filing that ithad no evidence to support Trump’s claim about improper surveillance duringthe campaign.
Without Trump’s signature, Section 702 had been set to expire on Friday,though intelligence officials had said the surveillance programme couldcontinue to operate until April.
Under the law, the NSA is allowed to eavesdrop on vast amounts of digitalcommunications from foreigners living outside the United States via UScompanies like Facebook Inc, Verizon Communications Inc and Alphabet Inc’sGoogle.
But the programme also incidentally scoops up Americans’ communications,including when they communicate with a foreign target living overseasandcan search those messages without a warrant.
The White House, US intelligence agencies and congressional Republicanleaders have said the programme is indispensable to national security,vital to protecting US allies and needs little or no revision.
Privacy advocates say it allows the NSA and other intelligence agencies tograb data belonging to Americans in a way that represents an affront to theUS Constitution. – AFP