Key Vote NO on the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act, H.R. 7888

On behalf of our activist community, I urge you to contact your senators and urge them to vote NO on the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act, H.R. 7888, including procedural votes related to the bill. The Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act would reauthorize Title VII of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (also known as “Section 702”) without any significant reforms. 

The Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act is seriously flawed and deeply problematic. The legislation is modeled on the so-called “reform” bill produced by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The critical reforms included in the House Judiciary Committee’s bill, the Protect Liberty and End Warrantless Surveillance Act, have been excluded from the base text.

While Speaker Mike Johnson and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence claim that the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act includes 56 so-called “reforms,” these changes, in most instances, aren’t reforms. The proposed changes include:

• At least 13 so-called “reforms” only codify existing practices. These practices are in place at this moment, and FISA is still being abused by the FBI and the intelligence community. 
• 13 relate to reporting or transparency requirements and don’t touch surveillance. 
• 10 are related to the application process
• 9 can be waived by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). 
• 3 apply exclusively to Members of Congress and no one else. 
• 1 weakens existing oversight of FISC. 
• 1 “reform” isn’t a reform at all. 

The Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act does absolutely nothing to protect Americans from searches of information collected through Section 702 by the FBI. This isn’t a matter of debate. The changes proposed in this waste of paper are toothless. Nearly all the abuses that we’ve previously cited—spying on donors to a congressional campaign, individuals engaged in lawful First Amendment activities, journalists, and members of Congress without a warrant—would continue under the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act.

Why? Because the FBI very rarely uses “evidence of a crime” as justification for searches of information collected under Section 702. In fact, there are only two (2) instances between December 2021 and November 2022 in which the FBI accessed the contents of communications pursuant to an “evidence of a crime”-only query that would be prohibited by this bill. That means the FBI would be prohibited from accessing content in one one-thousandth of 1 percent of all backdoor searches. This change in law is supposed to be a reform? Are we supposed to take this seriously?

Under the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act, oversight of the FISC would be substantially weakened when Congress should expand oversight and strengthen it. Weakening oversight of the FISC—which is already nonadversarial and needs to be strengthened, not weakened—is an idea that’s so terrible it’s difficult to put into words how mindbogglingly absurd it is. 

Worse, the House adopted amendments that made the bill substantially more damaging to civil liberties, including one amendment to expand the definition of an electronic communications service provider. Currently, 50 U.S.C. §1881(b) defines an electronic communications service provider as a telecommunications carrier defined by 18 U.S.C. §2510, a provider of an electronic communications service defined by 47 U.S.C §153, a provider of a remote computing service defined by 18 U.S.C. §2711, any communication provider that has access to wire or electronic communications transmitted or stored, and an officer, employee or agent of any of the preceding providers. This massively expands the definition of an electronic communications service provider to everything but dwellings defined by 42 U.S.C. §3602, public accommodation facilities defined by 50 U.S.C. §1861, food service establishments defined by 7 U.S.C. §1638, and community facilities defined by 42 U.S.C. §1592n. 

The debate over Section 702 is fundamentally a debate over protecting our civil liberties from government overreach. In the backdrop of this debate is the rise of authoritarianism and illiberalism inside the United States. Partisans point fingers at each other while complaining about the “weaponization of government.” Many of these same partisans fail to realize that Section 702 has been abused, and it will almost certainly be abused in the future since the so-called “reforms” in the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act aren’t going to prevent backdoor searches and weaken existing oversight. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the intelligence community are inviting that abuse. That is their intent. 

For these reasons, I urge you to call your senators and urge them to vote NO on the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act, H.R. 7888, including procedural votes related to the bill. FreedomWorks will count these votes on our 2024 Congressional Scorecard and reserves the right to score and weigh any related votes. We also reserve the right to score and weigh votes on any amendments that the Senate may consider to the underlying bill. The scorecard is used to determine eligibility for the FreedomFighter Award, which recognizes Members of the House and Senate who consistently vote to support economic freedom and individual liberty.

Sincerely,

Adam Brandon
President, FreedomWorks