A mysterious bill provision included in a two-year extension of a federal wiretapping law known as Section 702 is facing backlash from privacy advocates who warn about its broad language, the New York Times reports. National security officials said the provision would fix a technical issue in the law, while privacy advocates said it could be used to draft service people who can gain physical access to office computer equipment to act as spies. This bill provision was added after a dispute about whether or not a data center must comply with a warrantless surveillance program.
Under Section 702, the government may collect without a warrant the communications of foreigners abroad who have been targeted for intelligence or counterterrorism purposes — even when they are communicating with Americans. A court that oversees national security surveillance must approve the government’s annual requests seeking to renew the program and setting rules for it. The surveillance court in 2022 sided with an unidentified company that had objected to being compelled to participate in the program, but the details were redacted. Sources say the judges found that a data center service does not fit the legal definition of an “electronic communications service provider” because it does not itself give its users the ability to send or receive electronic messages.