Controversial spy program set to expire

**Asha Rangappa** (0:01)
WBUR Podcasts, Boston. This is one of the most important tools we have, particularly in a time of war and major hostile adversarial threats. I think it's really, really an important tool that we need to have.

**Chris Bentley** (0:17)
Uproar in Congress over the Trump loyalists nominated for a top spy position is starting to derail some legislation.
It's Thursday, June 11th, and this is Here and Now Anytime from NPR and WBUR. I'm Chris Bentley. Today on the show, anti-immigrant violence continues in the UK after an asylum seeker from Sudan allegedly stabbed a man in Belfast. Also, the Flaming Gorge reservoir in Wyoming is being drained to prop up Lake Powell, which is dangerously close to the point of not being able to generate power from its hydroelectric dam. A marina owner at Flaming Gorge says his dock has already sunk seven feet since April.

**Peter O'Dowd** (1:13)
We had a third of our freaking customers cancel.

**Asha Rangappa** (1:15)
They call us up and they say, oh, the water's gone, the water's gone.

**Peter O'Dowd** (1:17)
We're not going to build it.

**Tony Valdez** (1:18)
The water's gone.

**Chris Bentley** (1:19)
Scenes from the West's mega drought coming up in about 10 minutes.
But first, American intelligence agencies look likely to lose a controversial tool for warrantless wiretaps. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, lets agencies like the FBI, the NSA, and the CIA spy on people abroad without a warrant. And while it's meant to target foreign terrorism suspects, it's also swept up the communications of American citizens. That part of FISA is set to expire Friday. Congressional debate over extending it has been hung up by President Trump's planned appointment of Bill Poulty as acting Director of National Intelligence. Some lawmakers are worried that Poulty will use the government's spy powers against Trump's political opponents. The House of Representatives went home Thursday afternoon without passing that extension.
Asha Rangappa is a former FBI special agent, now at Yale, and she spoke with Indira Laxmanand.

**Indira Laxman** (2:22)
House Speaker Mike Johnson this morning condemned Democrats for demanding that the president rescind his appointment of Bill Poulty as acting Director of National Intelligence as a condition for extending FISA surveillance of terrorism suspects.

**Peter O'Dowd** (2:36)
They are willing to jeopardize the safety and the security of the American people to make a cheap political point.

**Indira Laxman** (2:43)
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the president brought this problem on himself.

**Tony Valdez** (2:47)
In the middle of sensitive negotiations to reauthorize surveillance authority, Donald Trump decides to toss a hand grenade into the middle of those negotiations to blow them up because Donald Trump decided he wants to elevate Bill Poulty.

**Indira Laxman** (3:07)
Okay. So Asha, what's the reality? Are Americans in danger if warrantless wiretapping overseas expires or is this fear mongering?

**Asha Rangappa** (3:18)
So I think we need to separate two things. First, I think the Democrats are using the leverage they have to hold back the nomination of what is a patently unqualified person for this position.
But the controversy over 702 has been around for years now. And I can just do a very quick crash course on 702 because it's kind of a complicated statute.

**Indira Laxman** (3:45)
Yeah, please do tell us who makes a request, how it's approved, and what kind of information you glean.

**Asha Rangappa** (3:50)
So the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was originally passed in 1978 And most people remember things like the Carter Page FISA and things like that. Those are all under what's called Title I of FISA. These are when the government has to go into a FISA court for an individual person and show probable cause that they need to conduct electronic surveillance for national security purposes. What happened is that the original statute was designed for wire communications. And so in the post 9-11 era, in the cellular age and the digital age, many purely foreign communications began to get routed through the United States, which would subject them to that individualized requirement.
And so they adopted a new type of FISA program called 702 Unlike Title I, 702 is a program. It's a series of procedures. And the Attorney General and the DNI go to the fifth court and say, do you approve of these procedures? And once the court does that, they can conduct searches under those procedures. And those procedures are, they allow the government to perform electronic surveillance on non-U.S. persons reasonably believed to be located abroad who have foreign intelligence information. It prohibits targeting US persons. What happens, though, is that the volume of these, the communications that they're collecting, so there's roughly 300,000 targets, they're collecting millions of communications, communications, emails, things like that.