The White House said on Tuesday as part of its drive to have electronic surveillance programs renewed by Congress that the US had used them to apprehend fentanyl smugglers and the hackers who temporarily shut down a US gasoline pipeline.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s Section 702 comes to an end at the end of this year.
White House Highlights Surveillance Successes
The administration of President Joe Biden is attempting to persuade Congress to reauthorize the law, which allows intelligence agencies to intercept vast swaths of international emails and phone calls.
But after a string of FBI mistakes and abuses of intelligence data, politicians from both parties are worried about safeguarding People’s privacy against unwarranted searches.
The Biden administration presented what it claimed were freshly declassified examples of Section 702 usage as part of its public campaign.
Prior to a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday during which both Democrats and Republicans criticized the bureau, the FBI also unveiled new sanctions for personnel who abuse intelligence data.
Section 702 in preventing terrorism has been frequently mentioned by previous administrations.
Nonetheless, two decades after the September 11 attacks, the American public has a generally lowered regard for intelligence services and a diminished willingness to forgo civil freedoms in the name of security.
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Section 702 Advocates Target Fentanyl and Cybersecurity Threats
This time, the White House and Section 702 proponents focus on worries about fentanyl, a synthetic opioid linked to 75,000 fatalities in the United States last year, and the Colonial Pipeline outage, which resulted in gas shortages along the East Coast two years ago.
Under restrictions imposed by the White House, senior administration officials Monday briefed reporters on the additional examples on the condition of anonymity.
Among other examples, the officials gave, the FBI was able to warn an American who was the target of foreign spies looking for information about the proliferation of WMDs, and the US identified the people behind a ransomware attack against nonprofit organizations last year that had an Iranian connection.
Administration sources claim that they briefed Lawmakers on further information in private.
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