Republicans and Democrats clashed during a rare congressional hearing on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as the reauthorization deadline for key surveillance powers looms.
Republicans and Democrats generally seemed in agreement about the importance of empowering the agencies to monitor lone wolf terrorists and to conduct roving wiretaps on potential terrorists or foreign agents who might switch phones to evade detection, while both sides also expressed skepticism about the Trump administration’s desire to permanently renew the NSA’s controversial phone call metadata collection program.
But the political parties were deeply divided on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as the impending release of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s FISA abuse report loomed in the background, and as the DOJ watchdog testified in a separate hearingelsewhere in the building.
