American intelligence services may continue to collect information about non-Americans outside United States. The US House of Representatives voted to extend an appropriate, controversial part of a surveillance law. 256 deputies were for extension, 164 voted against. The next step is for Senate to decide.

A group of Democrats and Republicans wanted to make changes to paragraph to protect data of US citizens whose communication is being skimmed off in context of surveillance of foreigners. According to its proposal, FBI would have had to obtain a power in such a case and have to make good reasons for data to be picked up. The House of Representatives has now rejected this proposal in its vote.

Section 702 of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) allows secret services to collect personal information, such as communications content such as email, chat, or Facebook messages. In reign of George Bush, Fisa 2008 was extended with an amendments act. Since n, warrantless wiretapping has been allowed to listen without a court order. Also, it suffices since NSA assumes that one of parties is in communication abroad, it does not need proof.

One of programmes to be covered by this clause is prism. The NSA is using it to access user data from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple and or companies. This practice was given greater attention because of revelations by Edward Snowden about NSA. Section 702 is also applied to tapping of fiber optic cables, i.e. to unreasonable mass monitoring of Internet users.

President Donald Trump had brought himself into debate before vote with contradictory statements. In a tweet, he wrote that paragraph might have been used to monitor his campaign team. Shortly reafter, he wrote that he had personally commissioned changes to practice. The most recent vote is about monitoring "bad guys" abroad.

Date Of Update: 12 January 2018, 12:02