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Congress has just over two months to reauthorize or alter controversial NSA surveillance powers before they expire. A bipartisan attempt to tweak the controversial parts of the FISA Amendments Act has been introduced in Congress. It’s called the “USA Liberty Act of 2017.”

Right now, via the FISA Amendments Act, emails and phone calls of an unknown number of Americans are being recorded and stored in a database law-enforcement agencies can search without first getting a warrant. These are often called “backdoor searches,” as they bypass Fourth Amendment protections of our privacy.

If you are wondering how many Americans our government is listening in on, sorry, we don’t know. The intelligence agencies told Congress they can’t say just how many American citizens have been eavesdropped on by the government (without warrants).

Despite this, they asked Congress to simply renew the controversial section 702 of the Act before it expires at the end of December; in fact, they asked that it be made permanent law.

Congress might have done that too if it wasn’t for the fact they recently found out they have political skin in the game.

Recent “unmaskings” show that even a congressman’s conversations with a foreign official might go public with their names un-redacted. Then, even if the member of Congress didn’t do anything wrong, what they said and whom they spoke with could quickly be taken out of context by the media outlets that root for the opposing team.

This is why Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said, “We cannot live in fear of our own intelligence community. They have such power to suck up every bit of every transmission, every communication we ever made. We can’t just have them willy-nilly releasing that to the public.”

So here are some key things this Liberty Act would do with the FISA Amendment Act.

Stops Many Warrantless Searches

The Liberty Act would require that a warrant be obtained by law-enforcement agencies before they can get an American citizen’s emails or phone calls recorded by the NSA. There is, however, a big exception carved out for U.S. intelligence agencies. In “subparagraph (C)” the Act gives intelligence agencies a series of exceptions to the warrant requirement, including whether a person “is the subject of an order or emergency authorization” and if “the Attorney General has a reasonable belief that the life or safety of a person is threatened….”

Because of these exceptions a statement by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) says, “The newly-introduced USA Liberty Act improves the situation somewhat, but doesn’t effectively stop these dangerous backdoor searches.”

Requires “Due Diligence”

The Act would require that the agencies utilizing the FISA Amendment Act use “due diligence in determining whether a person targeted is a non-United States person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States….” That’s an open-ended statement that leaves a lot of room for interpretation, but that could bite both ways.

Gives Accountability for “Unmaskings”

The Act states “procedures … shall include specific procedures adopted by the Attorney General for elements of the Federal Government to submit requests to unmask information in disseminated intelligence reports” including “that an individual who is making the request documents the rationale that such request is for legitimate reasons” and that the government retains “records of each request” including the name of the person who made the request.

Requires Reports to Congress

The Act would require that “incidentally collected communication and other information” be included in a “semiannual report submitted” to Congress. This report would include “the number, or a good faith estimate, of communications acquired” and an estimate of the number of Americans who have had their communications tapped. But the Act does give an out. It says that if “the Director determines that calculating the number, or a good faith estimate… is not achievable, a detailed explanation for why such calculation is not achievable.”

Intelligence agencies have told Congress before that they couldn’t say just how many Americans they listened in on without warrants. This at least would make intelligence agencies answer why they can’t or won’t tell us how many Americans they are listening in on.

Detail How Privacy is Affected

The Liberty Act would require intelligence agencies explain “how privacy and civil liberties are affected” by the law. This doesn’t have any teeth, but at least it makes intelligence agencies stop for a moment and think about the rights of the people they are working hard to protect.

The law, as it is now written, doesn’t go far enough for the EFF. They say, “The USA Liberty Act does require government agents to apply for a warrant to access data when they are seeking evidence of a crime. But … the new warrant restrictions won’t even apply to the NSA or CIA.”

Miniter is the author of Kill Big Brother, a cyber-thriller that shows how to keep our freedom in this digital age.

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