At multiple junctures, the FISA Court (FISC) has identified serious compliance problems with Section 702 of FISA, often based on the government’s repeated inability to follow basic rules that are supposed to protect Americans. Even when the government and its lawyers have promised to fix these problems, a wide variety of violations have persisted, including unauthorized collection of Americans’ communications, prohibited queries using Americans’ identifiers, and unlawful sharing of this highly sensitive information.

The U.S. Senate last week approved a six-year extension to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act (FISA), in a move that could put journalists at risk. Because people targeted by Section 702 are often of interest to the press as well as the NSA, journalists are more likely than most to have their communications inadvertently collected under the act.

As Jim Dempsey, a former member of the independent government advisory agency Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, told CPJ, “[U.S.] journalists are more likely than your average Joe” to talk to a foreign target and have the conversation picked up. Despite this, their voices were largely absent during the debate phase of the bill, which gives the NSA broad powers to collect the communications of foreign targets abroad from U.S. companies, without warrant.

There were two details of the Section 702 reauthorization in the House that deserve more attention, as the Senate prepares for a cloture vote today at 5:30.

First, in the Rules Committee hearing for the bill, Ranking House Judiciary Committee member Jerry Nadler revealed that the FBI stopped engaging with his staffers when the two sides reached a point on negotiations over the bill beyond which they refused to budge.

At 12:51pm on January 18, 2018–just a day before it was set to expire–the Senate followed the House’s lead and reauthorized the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act (FAA) Section 702 mass surveillance program for another six years by a vote of 65-34.

Writing for JustSecurity.org in October 2017, I made this prediction about the then-looming debate over extending the mass surveillance authority embodied in Section 702:

Despite spending much of the last twelve months denouncing the legitimate threat posed by President Donald Trump’s penchant for authoritarian policies and behavior, 65 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday joined with 191 Republicans in passing a bill that advocates of civil liberties warn will lead to the wholesale violation ‘of privacy rights for everyone in the United States.’

While the final vote on the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017 (or S.139)—which included renewal of the controversial Section 702 which allows government agencies to spy on the emails, text messages, and other electronic communications of Americans and foreigners without a warrant—was 256 to 164 in favor of passage, the partisan breakdown revealed that Republicans in the majority needed a great deal of Democratic support in order to have it pass.

It was with an extremely heavy heart that we recently learned our friend and former colleague James Dolan—one of the co-creators of SecureDrop and Freedom of the Press Foundation’s first full time employee—took his own life over the holidays. He was 36.

In 2012, James worked with Aaron Swartz and journalist Kevin Poulsen to build the original prototype of SecureDrop, the open source whistleblower submission system, which was then called DeadDrop. Poulsen described James’s role in the project’s creation in the New Yorker in 2013:

The defense for Reality Winner, a National Security Agency contractor accused of mailing a classified document on Russian hacking to The Intercept, contends the government misstates the law under the Espionage Act. They believe the government ignores “serious constitutional problems” raised by their interpretation of the statute.

But Winner’s defense faces a tremendous uphill struggle. Under President Barack Obama’s administration, leak prosecutions intensified the government’s ability to wield the Espionage Act as a strict liability offense, which means there is very little the government has to prove beyond the fact that an unauthorized disclosure took place.

Jeffrey and I would like to express our sincerest gratitude for your support you have shown us throughout his wrongful incarceration. It is difficult to fathom that my beloved husband has been imprisoned for the last 2.5 years and that truth and justice did not prevail. Forever Jeffrey must wear the scarlet letter of being a supposed traitor to his country. The country he still loves.

As the new year begins, we are preparing for Jeffrey’s transfer to a halfway house scheduled for January 16, 2018, where he will complete the remainder of his sentence. This new year brings hope that we can begin the arduous journey of rebuilding our life that the government vehemently destroyed.

Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Rául M. Grijalva (D-AZ) released the following statement following the markup of the USA Liberty Act (H.R. 3989) by the House Judiciary Committee:

“As the deadline to reauthorize broad government surveillance powers established under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act approaches, it is clear that only a bill that includes substantial reforms to protect journalists, activists, and citizens can pass the House and become law. “

The Trump administration has declared a war on media leaks and called for the U.S. federal workforce and contractors to receive “anti-leak” training. The centerpiece of Trump’s anti-leak campaign, aside from early morning tweet-storms railing against leakers and media, is the National Insider Threat Taskforce.

The Insider Threat Program is not Trump-era creation. In then-secret testimony to Congress in 2012, Directorate of National Intelligence official Robert Litt touted the original Insider Threat Program as a highlight in administrative efforts to “sanction and deter” leaks. In the past, Insider Threat Program training has improperly included “WANTED”-style images of whistleblowers pictured alongside actual spies and mass murderers.