Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act

Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act

This act reauthorizes Title VII of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for two years and makes changes to FISA, including expanding restrictions on surveillance under Section 702. (Section 702 concerns acquiring communications of non-U.S. persons believed to be outside the United States to obtain foreign intelligence information. Information about U.S. persons may incidentally be acquired by this type of surveillance and subsequently searched or queried under certain circumstances.)

Changes to FISA include

• requiring applications for electronic surveillance or a physical search under FISA to be supported by sworn statements and limiting the use of information derived from political organizations or media sources in such applications;
• requiring any extension of an order for electronic surveillance under FISA targeting a U.S. person to be granted or denied by the same judge who issued the original order to the extent practicable and absent exigent circumstances;
• providing that specified congressional leaders are entitled to attend any proceeding of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review (FISC-R) and that each such leader may also designate up to two staff members to attend on his or her behalf;
• repealing the authority to resume abouts collection (i.e., intentionally acquiring communications that contain a reference to, but are not to or from, a target of acquisition authorized under section 702(a) of FISA);
• increasing certain criminal and civil penalties related to FISA;
• requiring adverse consequences (e.g., suspension without pay or removal) for federal government officers and employees who engage in intentional misconduct with respect to proceedings before the FISC or FISC-R;
• expanding the definition of foreign intelligence information to include information related to the ability of the United States to protect against the international production, distribution, or financing of drugs driving overdose deaths (such as illicit synthetic drugs and opioids) or their precursors; and
• expanding the definition of electronic communication service provider to include any service provider that has access to equipment that is being or may be used to transmit of store wire or electronic communications, but excluding entities that serve primarily as dwellings, food service establishments, community facilities, or public accommodation facilities.

The act also makes various changes related to querying the contents of information collected under Section 702 of FISA. The statutory changes related to such querying include

• prohibiting Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) personnel from making U.S. person queries without prior approval by certain FBI supervisors or attorneys unless the query might mitigate or eliminate a threat to life or serious bodily harm;
• requiring the FBI Deputy Director to approve certain politically sensitive query terms (such as those that identify certain elected and appointed officials);
• prohibiting the involvement of political appointees in the approval process for such politically sensitive query requests;
• requiring the FBI to establish consequences for noncompliant querying of U.S. person terms, including zero tolerance for willful misconduct and escalating consequences for unintentional noncompliance, as well as consequences for supervisors who oversee those that engage in noncompliant querying;
• requiring the FBI Director to notify congressional leaders and the affected Member of Congress of any query using the name or personally identifying information of a Member of Congress, except that the Director may waive such notification if it would impede an ongoing national security or law enforcement investigation;
• prohibiting the FBI from conducting a query using the name or personally identifying information of a Member of Congress to supplement a defensive briefing about a counterintelligence threat to that Member unless the Member consents or the FBI Deputy Director determines that exigent circumstances exist (however, the FBI Director must notify congressional leaders when the FBI seeks such consent or when it makes an exigent circumstance determination);
• prohibiting queries that are solely designed to find and extract evidence of a crime, with certain exceptions;
• allowing such querying to vet non-U.S. persons who are being processed for travel to the United States provided that no U.S. person terms are used;
• requiring the Department of Justice (DOJ) to audit all U.S. person queries within 180 days of such query; and
• requiring the DOJ Inspector General to report to Congress on FBI querying practices, including an evaluation of compliance by FBI personnel with the procedures governing queries using U.S. person query terms.

The act establishes a FISA Reform Commission to review the effectiveness of the current implementation of FISA and to develop recommendations for legislative reform of FISA that provide for the effective conduct of U.S. intelligence activities and the protection of privacy and civil liberties.

For additional information see

• CRS In Focus 11451, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA);
• CRS Legal Sidebar 11148, FISA Section 702 Sunset, Authorization, and Potential Extension;
• CRS Report R47477, Reauthorization of Title VII of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; and
• CRS Report R48592, FISA Section 702 and the 2024 Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act

Written by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. All summary versions on Congress.gov