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On January 19, 2018, President trump of the United States signed a bill approving the extension of 702 clause of the controversial foreign intelligence surveillance law for six years. Here is the Xinhua News Agency report and the official statement of the White House.

Xinhua news agency, Washington, Jan. 19 (Xinhua) -- US President trump signed a bill on Jan. 19, approving the extension of the controversial 702 clause of the foreign intelligence surveillance law for six years. This means that U.S. intelligence agencies will continue to monitor e-mail, SMS and other communications of targets outside the United States without authorization.

The U.S. Congress passed 702 provisions in 2008, but the bill expires on the 19th. The two weeks before that, the house and the Senate had respectively approved the extension of the bill with little change.

The White House said in a statement that the bill re authorizes U.S. intelligence agencies to collect information on foreign targets and also allows U.S. agencies to share information on preventing terrorist attacks and cybercrime.

In 2013, Snowden, a former employee of the U.S. defense contractor, exposed the large-scale monitoring of the Internet and telephone by the U.S. intelligence agencies, which caused a storm. In 2015, the U.S. Congress passed a bill to end domestic monitoring programs.

For the 702 clause, the main controversy in the United States is that although it does not allow direct monitoring of U.S. citizens, it allows the collection of information about Americans who communicate with foreigners, whether they are in the United States or not. Other experts say the bill also allows the U.S. government to collect data from U.S. companies such as Google and Microsoft.

As a result, members of the house of representatives have proposed a restriction that requires intelligence agencies to obtain court authorization before collecting information about Americans, but it has not been approved by the house of Representatives.

The White House statement and Trump's tweets stressed that the latest bill strengthens the protection of American privacy and increases the supervision of the abuse of authorization, which is different from the bill under the Obama administration.

In response, the ACLU quoted trump as saying: "it's either a lie or trump got mixed up again." The Group believes the bill will actually allow the U.S. government to continue to intrude into private e-mails, text messages and other communications in the United States. (Reporter Lin Xiaochun, Zhou Zhou Zhou)

 FOREIGN POLICY

 Issued on: January 19, 2018

Today, I signed into law S. 139, “FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017” (the “Act”).  The Act reauthorizes Title VII of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act until December 31, 2023, and makes a number of amendments to current law.  Section 702 of Title VII allows the Intelligence Community, under a robust regime of oversight by all three branches of Government, to collect critical intelligence on international terrorists, weapons proliferators, and other important foreign intelligence targets located outside the United States.

This intelligence is vital to keeping the Nation safe.  As shown by the recent attacks in New York City and elsewhere around the globe, we face a constant threat from foreign terrorist networks and other foreign actors who would do us harm.  In order to detect and prevent attacks before they happen, we must be able to intercept the communications of foreign targets who are reasonably believed to possess foreign intelligence information.  Section 702 provides the necessary authority, and it has proven to be among the Nation’s most effective foreign intelligence tools.  It has enabled our Intelligence Community to disrupt numerous plots against our citizens at home and our warfighters abroad, and it has unquestionably saved American lives.  The Act I have signed today preserves and extends this critically important national security tool.

Section 702 provides robust privacy protections for American citizens, and most importantly prohibits the Government from using it to target Americans and persons located in the United States.  Only foreigners located abroad may be targeted for surveillance under section 702.  While every court to have considered section 702 has found it to be legal and consistent with the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, the Act establishes additional procedures to further protect the privacy of Americans whose communications are incidentally collected under section 702.  Among these is a new requirement that in a predicated criminal investigation — an investigation with an elevated factual foundation — the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) apply for and obtain an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court before accessing the contents of section 702 — acquired communications that were retrieved using certain United States person “query” terms.  By applying this provision only to certain queries in investigations unrelated to national security, the Act preserves the FBI’s ability to “connect the dots” and look for national security-related threats, especially during the critical pre‑investigation phase when it often does not yet have enough information to know whether a suspected threat relates to national security.  Although the Fourth Amendment does not require a court order to query information lawfully collected under section 702 — information already lawfully in the Government’s possession — this new procedure, along with the Act’s other oversight and transparency requirements, provides further privacy safeguards, while preserving the operational effectiveness of our foreign intelligence collection efforts. I would have preferred a permanent reauthorization of Title VII to protect the safety and security of the Nation.  By signing this Act today, however, I am ensuring that this lawful and essential intelligence program will continue to protect Americans for at least the next 6 years.  We cannot let our guard down in the face of foreign threats to our safety, our freedom, and our way of life. DONALD J. TRUMP THE WHITE HOUSE, January 19, 2018. 网络法前哨 ∣网络法前沿的侦察兵 感兴趣可长按关注前哨君