Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee is sponsoring a bill some worry could limit Houstonians privacy from the government

House Judiciary Committee member Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas gestures while returning to the House Chamber on Capitol Hill Saturday Dec. 19, 1998 after she and fellow House Democrats walked out of the chamber in protest when Republicans blocked their effort to force a vote on the lesser penalty of censure as an alternative to impeachment. The House later approved two of the four articles of impeachment lodged against President Clinton. (AP Photo/J.Scott Applewhite)

A new bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on October 6 aims to both reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and extend it for another six years.

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Joining several other cosponsors, House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), his Ranking Member John Conyers (D-MI), Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and Houston-area Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) put their names the legislation.

According to the text, the bill, known as the ‘USA Liberty Act,’ seeks to reauthorize FISA, which would otherwise expire at the end of this year; its reauthorizations would permit the continued collection of communications data on “non-U.S. persons,” though, according to some reports, this sometimes involves collecting data on U.S. citizens, as well.

Authors of the Liberty Act say Section 702 of FISA is of particular importance in regard to their bill; according to the House Judiciary Committee’s report on the Liberty Act, the specific section of the act providing U.S. government authorizations to collect data on non U.S. citizens outside the country is to enhance national security.

Opponents maintain their positions, however, citing concerns with the government’s access to metadata from U.S. citizens, inadvertent in authorized collections or otherwise.  They also reportedly believe the Liberty Act is nothing more than repackaged failed legislation dealing with internet privacy and data collections.

Metadata is not explicit recordings of phone calls, but it does encompass information many consider more private than public, including times of phone calls, length of calls and numbers dialed.

According to the Center for Democracy in Technology (CDT), FISA does not currently require the government to be specific about the reason it would like to collect certain data, as long as it falls under the umbrella of “foreign affairs” or “national defense,” per its authorizing text.

Contextualizing their concerns further, opponents additionally point to documents leaked by Edward Snowden as an example of the “loose nature” of permissions the government could interpret from Section 702; according to CDT, persons “who merely mention an identifier of a surveillance target even though neither person is himself under surveillance” were potentially being monitored in this case.

In short, as explained by CDT, before the Snowden leak, and in some capacities after, an array of activity warranted surviellance, like mentioning certain keywords on the possibility of a connection with a target, even with no evidence of a connection.

With FISA reauthorizations set to be approved by the Trump Administration before the end of the year, SJL’s Liberty Act would renew and extend federal mass surveillance programs currently in place, as well as codify the information, enabling it to be more easily shared between agencies – many opponents’ biggest source of complaints on the pending legislation.

Despite their concerns, according to the authors, this extension would actually prevent unnecessary data from being collected during counterintelligence operations in addition to improving communications between security and intelligence agencies.

Groups, like Demand Progress, a civil rights nonprofit, claim these reforms’ attempts, while potentially not perfect, as it described, are a good start, but says there is more to be done to protect innocent American’s privacy and liberty.

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As provided in a press release, the organization cited multiple violations of Section 702 from a report, claiming a “backdoor exception” for collection still allows for invasion of privacy.

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