Top intelligence officials called this week for Congress to reauthorize a provision that allows the Intelligence Community to target communications of non-U.S. persons overseas that can also incidentally — and controversially — sweep up information related to U.S. citizens.
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which sunsets this December, removed the requirement that a judge find probable cause to believe a target is a terrorist or spy. It permits the government to widely collect what is described as foreign intelligence information concerning non-U.S. persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States. The collection itself takes place within the United States – either on American communication platforms or as foreign communications that are routed through American servers.
“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” —Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62
Access all of The Cipher Brief‘s national security-focused expert insight by becoming a Cipher Brief Subscriber+Member.
