美国高级官员周二开始正式努力，就一项监控项目向国会发出警报，他们称该项目对保护国家安全“至关重要”，该项目将于今年年底到期。
该法规，即《外国情报监视法》第702条，为政府能够收集海外非美国人在美国平台上发送信息的通信奠定了基础，而无需使用搜查令。
然而，该计划因在此过程中偶然收集美国人的通信信息以及机构官员在某些情况下搜索收集到的信息的能力而受到审查。
“让我夜不能寐的是，如果我们不能更新FISA的702条款，会发生什么，”DOJ助理司法部长马特·奥尔森周二在布鲁金斯学会的一次演讲中说。“自颁布以来的15年里，第702条已成为情报界最有价值的国家安全法律工具。我们必须保留它，以应对我们将面临的不断演变的威胁。”
司法部长梅里克·加兰(Merrick Garland)和国家情报总监艾薇儿·海恩斯(Avril Haines)周二上午向国会领导人发送了一封联名信，敦促他们重新授权该项目，并列出了702条款被用来破坏国家安全威胁的几个具体例子。
第702条-获得的信息有助于美国去年成功锁定基地组织领导人艾曼·扎瓦希里(Ayman al-Zawahiri)，帮助官员迅速确定对美国境内关键基础设施进行勒索攻击的外国肇事者，并帮助当局挫败外国对手在美国招募间谍的企图。加兰和海恩斯列举了其他例子。
乔·拜登总统的国家安全顾问杰克·沙利文也在今天早上的一份声明中表达了政府对702条款重新授权的支持，称该项目是“美国国家安全的基石”
沙利文说:“这一权力是一个宝贵的工具，它每天都在继续保护美国人，对于确保美国国防、情报和执法机构能够应对来自中华人民共和国、俄罗斯、邪恶的网络行为者、恐怖分子以及那些试图损害我们关键基础设施的人的威胁至关重要。”
包括司法委员会主席、俄亥俄州众议员吉姆·乔丹在内的众议院共和党人已经明确表示，他们计划在没有重大让步的情况下，反对任何重新授权该项目的努力。在福克斯新闻频道和其他保守派媒体上露面时，他们试图将这个问题与前总统唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)表达的担忧以及他对情报界监视权力的长期攻击联系起来。
特朗普在很大程度上把这些不满归咎于联邦调查局在2016年和2017年对特朗普竞选团队前顾问卡特·佩吉的监控。一份DOJ监察长的报告发现，法院授权对佩奇进行窃听的申请中存在重大错误和疏漏。
但该计划与FISA计划完全不同，政府目前正在呼吁国会在年底到期前重新授权，不涉及法院批准的授权。
相比之下，2021年，官员们发现了超过230，000起非美国人成为第702条无证监控目标的情况。根据DNI的最新数据，同年，官员们只寻求FISA法院授权对国内370多名美国人或非美国公民进行监控。
不过，奥尔森周二承认，当官员被发现滥用702条款项目时，这些批评是合理的。去年年底的一项审计几次概述了联邦调查局官员使用702搜索查询系统，将美国人的身份用于未经授权的目的。
在某些情况下，如果一名官员试图确定一名可能被视为外国黑客或间谍活动受害者的美国人，这种询问是适当的。但审计发现，在一些情况下，官员们似乎误解了规则，并利用该程序来筛选潜在的线人，以获取任何有害信息，还有一次，一名特工询问了一个当地政党的名称，以查看它是否与外国情报部门有联系。
“归根结底，这些错误是不可接受的，”奥尔森说。“我们不接受它们，法院或国会不接受它们，公众也不接受它们。他们也不应该。”
奥尔森说，在审计之后，联邦调查局实施了几项改革，导致美国个人查询总数大幅下降。
“当然，在一个复杂的系统中会有合规事件，涉及人类，试图在时间压力下解决极其困难的问题，”奥尔森说。“但现实是，每一个错误都会损害公众对我们如何使用这些工具的信任和信心。”
奥尔森表示，要向前推进，需要与国会领导人就重新授权该项目的重要性进行坦诚的讨论，但他一再试图强调，如果该项目失效哪怕只有几天，他所说的对美国国家安全的严重影响。
“我认为这非常可怕，”奥尔森说。“我可以告诉你，从我自己的职业生涯开始，追溯到2000年到今天，我已经看到702变得越来越重要——越来越成为一种工具，使我们能够收集我们没有其他方式获得的信息。”
FISA program that helped take down Zawahiri is expiring. Officials are sounding the alarm.
Top U.S. officials on Tuesday began their formal efforts to sound an alarm to Congress on a surveillance program -- one they describe as "critical" to protecting national security -- that is set to expire at the end of this year.
The statute, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, lays the groundwork for the government to be able to collect the communications of non-Americans overseas who message on U.S.-based platforms without use of a warrant.
The program has drawn scrutiny, however, over the incidental collection of Americans' communications that are swept up in the process -- and the ability for officials at agencies to in certain cases search through that collected information.
"What keeps me up at night is thinking about what will happen if we fail to renew Section 702 of FISA," DOJ Assistant Attorney General Matt Olsen said in a speech at the Brookings Institution Tuesday. "In the 15 years since enactment, Section 702 has become the Intelligence Community’s most valuable national security legal tool. And we must retain it to confront the evolving threats we will be facing ahead."
Attorney General Merrick Garland and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines sent a joint letter to congressional leaders Tuesday morning urging them to reauthorize the program, listing several specific instances in which Section 702 was used to disrupt national security threats.
Section 702-acquired information helped contribute to the successful U.S. targeting of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri last year, has helped officials quickly identify foreign perpetrators of ransomware attacks against critical infrastructure inside the U.S., and helped authorities disrupt foreign adversaries' attempts to recruit spies in the U.S.; among other examples outlined by Garland and Haines.
President Joe Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan also expressed the administration's support for reauthorization of Section 702 in a statement this morning, describing the program as a "cornerstone of U.S. national security."
"This authority is an invaluable tool that continues to protect Americans every day and is crucial to ensuring that U.S. defense, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies can respond to threats from the People’s Republic of China, Russia, nefarious cyber actors, terrorists, and those who seek to harm our critical infrastructure," Sullivan said.
House Republicans, including Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, have already made clear their plans to fight any effort to reauthorize the program without significant concessions. In appearances on Fox News and other conservative outlets, they have sought to tie the issue to concerns voiced by former President Donald Trump and his long-running attacks on the intelligence community's surveillance powers.
Trump has largely hinged those grievances on the FBI's handling of surveillance against a former adviser to his campaign, Carter Page, in 2016 and 2017. A DOJ inspector general report found significant inaccuracies and omissions in the applications for court-authorized wiretaps against Page.
But that program is entirely separate from the FISA program that the administration is currently appealing to Congress to reauthorize before its end of year expiration, which doesn't involve court approved warrants.
For comparison, in 2021 officials identified more than 230,000 instances in which non-U.S. persons were targets of Section 702 warrantless surveillance. That same year officials only sought FISA court-authorized surveillance against more that 370 Americans or non-U.S. citizens inside the country, according to the most updated data from the DNI.
Olsen, though, acknowledged Tuesday the valid criticism of cases when officials have been found to have misused the Section 702 program. An audit late last year outlined several times when FBI officials used the 702 search query system using Americans' identifiers for unauthorized purposes.
In certain cases, such queries would be proper if an official was seeking to identify an American who could be considered a victim of foreign hacking or spying. But the audit found cases in which it said officials appeared to have misunderstood the rules and used the program to screen potential informants for any damaging information and one case where an agent queried the name of a local political party to see if it had connections to foreign intelligence.
"At the end of the day, these mistakes are not acceptable," Olsen said. "They aren’t acceptable to us, are not acceptable to the court or Congress, and not acceptable to the public. Nor should they be."
Olsen said following the audit the FBI implemented several reforms that resulted in a dramatic drop in the total number of U.S. person queries.
"Of course, there are going to be compliance incidents in a complex system, involving human beings, trying to work on tremendously difficult problems under time pressure," Olsen said. "But the reality is that every mistake undermines public trust and confidence in how we use these tools."
Olsen said moving forward would require candid discussions with congressional leaders on the importance of reauthorizing the program, but repeatedly sought to underscore what he said could be dire implications for U.S. national security if the program lapsed for even a few days.
"I think it is very dire," Olsen said. "I can tell you from my own career going back to my time at the FBI in the 2000s to today, I have seen the way in which 702 has become increasingly important -- increasingly the tool that enables us to collect information that we have no other way of getting."
