White House provides new details on use of surveillance tool ahead of Senate hearing

The Biden administration has declassified new intelligence about its successes with a controversial surveillance tool ahead of a Senate hearing Tuesday on its use — its latest attempt to convince lawmakers to reauthorize the power without major changes.

A trio of senior administration officials disclosed new details to reporters on how Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has been used to mitigate three pressing national security challenges: fentanyl trafficking, foreign cyberattacks and Beijing’s persecution of dissidents.

But the disclosures are not likely to sway lawmakers who argue the spy tool presents an unacceptable privacy risk to Americans. The FBI has admitted that its agents improperly used Section 702 — which allows the U.S. spy agencies to collect digital communications of foreigners located abroad — to investigate Americans.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is set to debate oversight of the program — which is set to expire at year-end — on Tuesday. The panel jointly oversees Section 702 with the Senate Intelligence Committee, and it will play a role in approving any legislative package to reauthorize the law.

“No vote – including my own – should be taken for granted,” Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), a member of the Senate panel, said in a statement. He said the hearing represents a key forum to consider what additional reforms may be necessary.

One of the officials argued Section 702 “is not just useful or important or helpful, but at this point it is vital to addressing a wide array of national security challenges.” The officials provided the briefing on the condition that they not be named and did not provide a reason for the need for anonymity.

They said 702 has yielded insights into the Chinese origins of a chemical used to synthesize fentanyl and to track the “quantities and potency” of drugs being smuggled into the country.

The tool also helped the Biden administration identify the hacker behind a 2021 ransomware attack that crippled the country’s largest fuel pipeline — and then seize a part of the payment the individual extorted from the victim, Colonial Pipeline.

The ability to query U.S. data within the database also allowed the FBI to unravel a Chinese hack against an U.S. transportation hub and an Iranian digital espionage effort that targeted the head of a U.S. federal department, they said.

The FBI has recently instituted a number of internal reforms that have significantly curbed abuses of the authority, according to a recent intelligence community oversight report. But a vocal group of lawmakers believe those measures do not go far enough.

Section 702 “should not be renewed without significant reforms to safeguard Americans’ privacy and constitutional rights,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill), the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, tweeted last month.

Many lawmakers are calling for the introduction of a warrant requirement to prevent the FBI from abusing the program to spy on Americans.

But the officials continued to press the Biden administration’s argument that measures like that would significantly reduce the effectiveness of the tool.

“Permitting 702 to lapse or to see it renewed in diminished or unusable form would really raise grave national security risks,” the first official said.

The officials insisted that the new FBI compliance fixes mean that adding the requirement for warrants isn’t necessary. Those changes, which include tweaks like requiring bureau officials to affirmatively opt-in to queries, have largely eliminated a prior pattern of abuse involving the surveillance program, they argued.