U.S. House votes to drastically expand Section 702 surveillance program rather than reining it in

As I wrote last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) failed to bring a reauthorization bill to a vote on Wednesday, and civil liberties campaigners said this was because he had opposed amendments that would have required agencies like the FBI to get warrants before using Section 702 to spy on Americans’ communications. (Section 702 authorizes warrantless spying on non-Americans, but also allows agencies to spy on any Americans who interact with foreigners.)

But, when reconsidering the reauthorization on Friday, the House was evenly split (212-212) on an amendment that would have demanded those warrants, meaning the amendment lost out under House rules. House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Turner (R-Ohio) had told lawmakers that requiring a warrant to spy on Americans would give al-Qaeda and the Chinese Communist Party “full constitutional protections to recruit in the United States.”

Representatives then went on to vote through a version of the reauthorization bill that included a very different amendment—introduced by Turner and Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.)—that would hugely expand the impact of Section 702, rather than reining it in. The House will hold another procedural vote on it today, but, if it passes again, this will now be in the Senate’s hands.

If the Senate also passes this bill including the Turner and Himes amendment—a vote will probably take place on Thursday—Big Tech and telecom companies like AT&T won’t be the only ones finding themselves forced to help agencies spy on people. Per the amendment, this obligation would be extended to any service provider with “access to equipment that is being or may be used to transmit or store wire or electronic communications.” There are narrow exceptions for hotels, restaurants, and community facilities, but the broad language could mean anyone from commercial landlords to the Geek Squad potentially being dragooned into secretly aiding U.S. intelligence.

“The House bill represents one of the most dramatic and terrifying expansions of government surveillance authority in history,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) in a statement. “It allows the government to force any American who installs, maintains, or repairs anything that transmits or stores communications to spy on the government’s behalf. That means anyone with access to a server, a wire, a cable box, a Wi-Fi router, or a phone. It would be secret: The Americans receiving the government directives would be bound to silence, and there would be no court oversight.”

“I will do everything in my power to stop this bill,” Wyden added. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) signaled his support for Wyden on X, and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) is also on board. “Voting to reauthorize FISA 702 without a warrant requirement is difficult to defend. So are those casting such votes—especially if they purport to care about the Fourth Amendment,” Lee posted today.

Vinh Vuong, CEO of investment firm Garrison Fathom, told me today: “We are going to do everything we can from a civil liberties standpoint to educate the Senate and make sure the wording is revised to not have this expansion, as well as to have a warrant requirement.”

Vuong has long been a campaigner for FISA reform, working as communications chief for the Project for Privacy and Surveillance Accountability, which lobbies for FISA reform alongside organizations such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Wikimedia Foundation. The investor told me he’s concerned about this latest development not only from a civil liberties standpoint but also because of the impact it will have on American businesses.

“Business is run by data now, so now the trust in that is being obliterated by this amendment,” Vuong said. “Any one of these employees, any one of these services can be forced to spy on particular individuals, including American citizens, without a warrant … Every business and corporation should be outraged about this amendment and should contact their lawmakers about this, because it will affect them.”

Of course, Americans aren’t the only ones affected here, given that FISA is chiefly concerned with spying on foreigners. Bulk surveillance under Section 702 was already one of the main reasons for the cancellation of two data-sharing deals that U.S. companies used as a legal basis to serve customers in the EU, and the third such deal (known as the Data Privacy Framework) is likely to be challenged on similar grounds. If the scope of Section 702 suddenly expands, that’s going to make the challenge even easier, creating major headaches for Big Tech down the line in Europe.

But that’s a whole different story. The impact for businesses and citizens within the U.S. would be far more immediate. More news below.

David Meyer

Want to send thoughts or suggestions to Data Sheet? Drop a line here.

NEWSWORTHY

Tesla layoffs. Tesla is laying off more than a tenth of its workforce around the world, Electrek reports. The exact number remains unclear, but Tesla’s headcount is around 140,000. In an email to staff, CEO Elon Musk blamed “duplication of roles and job functions in certain areas” that had occurred in the context of “rapid growth”—which, to be clear, is not the context in which Tesla currently finds itself.

Google vs. California. Incensed at a California bill that would require it to pay news organizations for linking to their news sites, Google has temporarily blocked links to news websites in the state. It said in a blog post that the move is intended to “prepare” for the bill’s possible implications, and only a “small percentage of California users” are affected for now. Meanwhile, Reuters has an article on what happened in Canada when Meta blocked links to news stories there, for similar reasons—in short, memes have replaced journalism in political discussions, with unreliable sources thriving.

Samsung’s CHIPS Act cash. Samsung is set to be the latest beneficiary of the U.S.’s CHIPS Act, with the government today announcing preliminary terms for a $6.4 billion grant that will support the company’s construction of new manufacturing facilities in Texas. As the Wall Street Journal reports, this has led Samsung to more than double its commitment to around $45 billion, with the plan now including a second factory, plus an advanced chip-packaging facility and R&D capabilities.

SIGNIFICANT FIGURES

9.6%

—The drop in Apple’s iPhone shipments in the March quarter, according to analyst house IDC. The fall was worse than Wall Street expected and is largely down to worsening demand for Apple’s devices in China. Overall, the mobile market is doing very well.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Workers at Elon Musk’s Boring Co. accidentally dug too close to a supporting column of the Las Vegas monorail last year, forcing officials to briefly halt service, by Jessica Mathews

Some ex-TikTok employees say the social media service worked closely with its China-based parent despite claims of independence, by Alexandra Sternlicht

Biotech CEO who relied on multiple aliases sentenced to 7 years in prison for Theranos-like $28 million fraud involving a fake finger-prick COVID test, by Amanda Gerut

From rags to riches, Rent the Runway goes from penny stock to quadrupling share prices in days after doubling down on AI, by Sasha Rogelberg

EV repair costs are so high in the U.K. that minor accidents can total a car and send it to the junkyard: ‘It’s instant death on these systems,’ by Bloomberg

Bitcoin ‘halving’ will cost crypto miners $10 billion a year in lost revenue and ‘could well determine who comes out ahead and who gets left behind,’ by Bloomberg

BEFORE YOU GO

AI disinformation is easy. NewsGuard’s Jack Brewster has an eye-opening article in the Wall Street Journal about how cheap and easy it is to build an AI-powered disinformation website that rewrites real news stories from real publications to discredit a target. All you have to do is pay some random person online to build the site, which then runs on autopilot, with ChatGPT churning out the articles according to the instructions of the person behind it. This is known as a “pink slime” operation, and Brewster got one up and running for all of $105.