July 26, 2021–Due Process Institute joined a letter to urge all members of the House of Representatives to support the Lofgren-Massie amendment offered to H.R. 4505, the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act for FY 2022. This amendment would prohibit the use of funds for the warrantless search of United States persons’ communications acquired under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA), the controversial foreign intelligence authority that acquires an untold number of Americans’ Fourth Amendment protected information.
According to one opinion, the FBI, over the course of one year, conducted three million queries of a single database containing Section 702 communications, most of which presumably were U.S. person queries in light of the FBI’s primarily domestic mission. Although Congress has required the FBI to obtain a FISC order for a small subset of these queries, the FISC found that the FBI has literally never complied with this statutory requirement and has violated it on at least dozens of occasions. Ending this unconstitutional practice is imperative to ensure that foreign intelligence surveillance does not swallow Americans’ privacy rights.