A cornerstone of American surveillance law is on the verge of lapsing for the first time in its history — and a political standoff over a personnel pick is largely to blame.
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is the legal authority that allows the NSA and FBI to conduct warrantless surveillance. According to TechCrunch, the law will "all but certainly" expire on Friday after lawmakers rejected President Trump's controversial nominee to lead the nation's spy agencies.
The law has long been a flashpoint between national security hawks, who argue it is essential for tracking foreign threats, and civil liberties advocates, who say it too easily sweeps up Americans' communications without a warrant. Periodic reauthorization fights have repeatedly forced Congress to confront those tensions — but the law has always survived them, until now.
The collapse appears tied directly to the Senate's refusal to confirm Trump's pick to oversee the intelligence community. That rejection created a political logjam that prevented the reauthorization from moving forward before the deadline.
Why it matters: Section 702 underpins some of the U.S. government's most sensitive foreign intelligence operations, and even a brief lapse could disrupt active surveillance programs, force agencies to wind down collection activities, and set a precedent that a law once considered untouchable can, in fact, die.