Washington Post: Coalition urges intelligence community to consider surveillance power reforms 

A coalition of civil liberties groups met with Avril Haines, the director or national intelligence, and other intelligence officials last week, urging them to support reforms to contentious U.S. surveillance powers that are set to expire at the end of the year.  

Representatives from Demand Progress, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Project on Government Oversight, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Democracy and Technology were among those that attended the meeting. 

The spying authority — Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — allows the FBI and National Security Agency to gather electronic data without a traditional warrant based on probable cause when the target is a foreigner overseas and it’s for foreign intelligence purposes. But those intercepted exchanges sometimes include conversations with Americans, raising skeptics’ fears that American communications are warrantlessly swept up in the process.

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