Americans Deserve Answers on Himes’s Role in Johnson’s FISA Scheme
Washington, D.C. — Early Friday morning, the House failed to pass a deceitful proposal that would have expanded the government’s ability to use Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act against Americans. Instead, the House unanimously moved to extend the FISA authority through April 30 to allow for further negotiations. Politico also reported that House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Jim Himes (D-CT) was caught talking with Republican leaders before the vote.
Demand Progress is part of a bipartisan coalition urging Congress to close loopholes in the law that allow the government to bypass the courts to surveil Americans.
The following is a statement from Demand Progress Executive Director Sean Vitka:
“Speaker Johnson’s failure to ram through an 18-month FISA extension creates time for Congress to vote on critical privacy protections, namely closing the backdoor search and data broker loopholes. This failure of Himes and House Republican leaders is a testament to the good-faith, bipartisan movement fighting tirelessly for Americans’ privacy rights. This is a major opportunity to protect Americans’ civil liberties, and the Republicans who withstood this pressure should be celebrated for putting privacy over party.
Extraordinarily, four Democrats chose to back Speaker Johnson over Leader Jeffries on this critical privacy vote. Given that top Intelligence Democrat Jim Himes was caught speaking with Speaker Johnson before the vote, reporters should be asking whether he engineered these defections in an effort to sabotage the mere chance for the House to enact key, broadly bipartisan civil liberties protections. It would be unconscionable for someone with a critical oversight role like Himes to do so.
It’s time for the White House, Speaker Johnson, Jim Himes and everyone else fighting against privacy reform to face reality: the American people don’t want FISA to continue as-is and are watching like hawks. If you want to renew FISA, you must come to the table and agree to real privacy reforms that stop the government from bypassing the courts to collect private information on Americans.”
A robust set of resources on the need for privacy reforms for FISA is available here and here, and additional background, context, polling, reform demands, resources and other information is available here. Video of Drop Site News asking members about their support for a clean FISA renewal is here.