{"id":47638,"date":"2026-04-11T12:55:04","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T12:55:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/?p=47638"},"modified":"2026-04-11T12:55:04","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T12:55:04","slug":"clapper-brennan-urge-spy-powers-authority-without-reforms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/?p=47638","title":{"rendered":"Clapper, Brennan Urge Spy Powers Authority Without Reforms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"subheading\">A group of deep state actors including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, and others urged Congress to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) without reforms.<\/p>\n<p class=\"a9d-pre\"><span class=\"a\">The group of 50 former national security officials <a href=\"https:\/\/therecord.media\/national-security-vets-warn-section-702-authorization-delay\">wrote<\/a> to members of Congress:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"D-ROS-B1\" class=\"a9d\"\/>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B1\" class=\"a9d\"\/>\n<figure id=\"gmxrevmore\" class=\"H\"\/>\n<blockquote>\n<p><span class=\"a\">We, the undersigned former national\u00a0security officials (Republicans, Democrats and\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"a\">independents), write to urge Congress to promptly reauthorize Section 702 of the\u00a0Foreign\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"a\">Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for an additional eighteen months as proposed by the\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"a\">Trump administration.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span class=\"a\">\u201cWe cannot afford to let our Intelligence Community lose this tool that helps keep our nation safe, even for a day,\u201d the letter continued.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The Trump administration has asked for a clean extension of the surveillance authority, although it remains unclear if a clean extension can pass through Congress. Section 702 is a surveillance authority meant to be used to spy on foreign adversaries; however, Americans\u2019 private communications incidentally get surveilled without a warrant, contrary to the Fourth Amendment protections against warrantless surveillance.<\/p>\n<p>The former national security officials argued that reforming surveillance practices by requiring a warrant to purchase Americans\u2019 private data through third-party data brokers, what is known as the data broker loophole, is a separate matter for Congress.<\/p>\n<p class=\"a9d-pre\">\u201cIn short, we cannot afford to place Section 702 reauthorization at risk by entangling it with unrelated policy initiatives that warrant further \u2014 but separate \u2014 consideration,\u201d the officials concluded.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"D-ROS-B2\" class=\"a9d\"\/>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B2\" class=\"a9d\"\/>\n<p>Not everyone was convinced by this letter.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWarrantless government spying on American citizens has been used by the deep state to target President Trump\u2019s campaign and associates, members of Congress, and hardworking, law-abiding Americans alike. We should not rubber stamp such wide surveillance powers for the very agencies which have abused them without massive reforms,\u201d Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) told Breitbart News in a written statement.<\/p>\n<p>Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) is a sponsor of the Government Surveillance Reform Act, a bill that would reform Section 702 by requiring a warrant for searches of U.S. persons and closing the data broker loophole.<\/p>\n<p>He shared a picture of a <em>Politico<\/em> article that shows the former national security officials\u2019 claims during the run-up to the 2020 presidential election that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation. Those officials included Clapper, Brennan, and others.<\/p>\n<p>Davidson asked rhetorically, \u201cWhere have we heard this before?\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/t\/assets\/html\/tweet-5.html#2042303671023583737\" data-btlnk=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Rep_Davidson\/status\/2042303671023583737\" class=\"bnn-if-tweet\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"260\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowtransparency=\"true\" allowfullscreen=\"true\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Davidson <a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/opinion\/congress-blog\/5822910-fisa-section-702-reform\/\">wrote<\/a> in an op-ed on Thursday:<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B3\" class=\"a9d adSo\"\/>\n<blockquote>\n<p>This is not limited to suspected criminals or national security threats\u00a0\u2014\u00a0it can include ordinary, law-abiding citizens going about their routines. When the government can access this information in bulk, it gains the ability to reconstruct where you\u2019ve been, who you\u2019ve interacted with, and what you\u2019ve done over extended periods of time.\u00a0Developments with AI exacerbate these problems.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Clapper in 2019 <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/business-33a88feb083ea35515de3c73e3d854ad\">denied<\/a> lying to Congress when he falsely testified during the Obama administration that the government does not \u201cwittingly\u201d collect the telephone records of millions of Americans.<\/p>\n<p>Others outside of Congress do not share the same enthusiasm as the former national security officials.<\/p>\n<p>Patrick Eddington, a former CIA analyst and now civil liberties policy analyst at the Cato Institute, told Breitbart News in a written statement, \u201cThe individuals who signed the letter to House and Senate members are among those who have claimed \u2014 falsely \u2014 that the STELLAR WIND and PATRIOT ACT Section 215 metadata programs were \u2018vital\u2019 and \u2018saved lives.\u2019 Neither program ever stopped a terrorist attack on America. Mass electronic surveillance doesn\u2019t stop attacks \u2014 but it does terrorize Americans and chill their speech as existing social science research has demonstrated.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt takes a special kind of audacity for a man who famously gave the \u2018least untruthful\u2019 answer to Congress to now sign on to a letter to lecture them on which surveillance loopholes are relevant to a privacy debate. According to the logic of this letter, the government\u2019s nasty habit of buying your private data is wholly unrelated to their other nasty habit of abusing their power to spy on Americans,\u201d\u00a0James Czerniawski, the head of emerging technology policy at the Consumer Choice Center, told Breitbart News. \u201cI\u2019m sure the millions of Americans at home are comforted knowing that these individuals are perfectly happy knowing our Fourth Amendment rights are getting bypassed regardless. Americans have spoken loudly on this issue. They want reforms. The time to fix this program plagued with rampant and repeated abuse is now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Other lawmakers in Congress have called for a warrant requirement for Section 702 searches of American citizens and for barring the intelligence agencies from purchasing Americans\u2019 communications.<\/p>\n<p class=\"a9d-pre\"><span class=\"r-b88u0q\">\u201cThe Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale. <\/span>Our intelligence apparatus should not be able to go around Constitutional protections by purchasing data from brokers,\u201d\u00a0<span class=\"r-b88u0q\">Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX) wrote. He named a warrant requirement as \u201cone of the three things that need to be part of the conversation\u201d around FISA reauthorization. \u201c<\/span>Intelligence agencies must operate within the Constitutional protections against warrantless searches against US citizens,\u201d he said in a social media post:<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B4\" class=\"a9d adSo\"\/>\n<iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/t\/assets\/html\/tweet-5.html#2042376309309857921\" data-btlnk=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RepMichaelCloud\/status\/2042376309309857921\" class=\"bnn-if-tweet\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"260\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowtransparency=\"true\" allowfullscreen=\"true\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) wrote, \u201cI won\u2019t vote to let feds spy on you without a warrant. FISA 702 allows the government to search for your information in vast databases compiled while targeting foreigners.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/t\/assets\/html\/tweet-5.html#2042596045343855041\" data-btlnk=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RepThomasMassie\/status\/2042596045343855041\" class=\"bnn-if-tweet\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"260\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowtransparency=\"true\" allowfullscreen=\"true\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A spokesman for Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) said she would not vote to reauthorize Section 702 unless it also included voter ID verification measures:<\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/t\/assets\/html\/tweet-5.html#2042330211342020875\" data-btlnk=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RepLuna\/status\/2042330211342020875\" class=\"bnn-if-tweet\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"260\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowtransparency=\"true\" allowfullscreen=\"true\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/t\/assets\/html\/tweet-5.html#2042605959823134925\" data-btlnk=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/laurenboebert\/status\/2042605959823134925\" class=\"bnn-if-tweet\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"260\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowtransparency=\"true\" allowfullscreen=\"true\"><\/iframe>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/politics\/2026\/04\/10\/deep-state-actors-james-clapper-john-brennan-urge-reauthorization-spy-powers-authority-without-reforms\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A group of deep state actors including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, and others urged Congress to reauthorize Section&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}