By NOMAAN MERCHANT and ERIC TUCKER
WASHINGTON — Growing anger at the FBI from both parties in Congress has become a major hurdle for U.S. intelligence agencies fighting to keep their vast powers to collect foreign communications that often sweep up the phone calls and emails of Americans.
Key lawmakers say they won’t vote to renew the programs under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that expire at the end of this year without major changes targeting the FBI. Many blame problems with how the FBI’s special agents search for U.S. citizens using Section 702 — along with publicly revealed mistakes in other intelligence investigations by the bureau.
Among the revelations since the law was last renewed in 2018: The bureau misled surveillance court judges in seeking to wiretap a 2016 campaign aide for former President Donald Trump, and agents didn’t follow guidelines in searching Section 702 databases for the names of a congressman on the House Intelligence Committee, a local political party, and people of Middle Eastern descent.
Two successive chief judges of the primary U.S. surveillance court criticized the bureau in written opinions, with one saying the frequency of mistakes in the bureau’s investigation of Russian election interference “calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable.”
The debate is of great consequence to U.S. intelligence officials, who argue that the law is perhaps their most critical tool to stopping terrorism, enemy spies, and cyberattacks. According to the intelligence community, 59% of the items in the briefing given daily to President Joe Biden last year featured information the National Security Agency captured under Section 702.
And the classified Pentagon documents leaked online in recent weeks make clear how much the U.S. relies on electronic snooping, with dozens of items on allies and foes alike sourced to what’s known as “signals…
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