NERMEEN SHAIKH: This is Democracy Now! I’m Nermeen Shaikh in New York, with Amy Goodman in Sheffield, England.

A key provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, is set to expire on Friday unless it’s reauthorized by Congress. Section 702 allows for the warrantless surveillance of foreign nationals believed to be outside of the U.S., but is highly controversial for inherently sweeping up and storing vast amounts of data from Americans, including emails, texts and cellphone data. A bipartisan group of senators is opposing the reauthorization. President Trump has asked Congress to pass a short-term extension to buy time, which will be voted on today.

AMY GOODMAN: The push to reauthorize FISA has been complicated by Trump’s selection of MAGA loyalist Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence, replacing Tulsi Gabbard. Pulte has no known background in intelligence. While serving as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, he used his position to target Trump’s political enemies with criminal referrals over claims of mortgage fraud. Pulte will remain director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and chair of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, while also serving as chief of intelligence. President Trump was asked by a reporter last week why he believes Pulte is the best person for the job.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, he’s very smart. He’s a person who’s got high integrity. … And it’s an acting position. It’s not a permanent — he’s not going to be permanent, because, you know, I don’t think he’d want to be permanent. But he’s a very smart guy, and he may find out some things about the rigged elections, etc., etc.

AMY GOODMAN: To talk about this and more, we’re joined by Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, just written a new book, Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance. She’s joining us from San Francisco.

Cindy, thanks so much for being with us. Can you explain what this controversial article is of FISA, that has to be dealt with by tomorrow? And also talk about the significance of Pulte and his new role.

CINDY COHN: Sure. FISA Section 702 is a piece of the foreign surveillance law that has to be reauthorized every couple of years. And this reauthorization came up because, some of you may recall, the government was doing all of this illegally and off the books for many, many years. And after they got caught, Congress created some oversight, not enough, and one of the pieces of oversight was that this has to be reauthorized every couple of years, so that Congress can take a look and see whether it’s working well, whether more privacy protections are needed, or whether it should be continued at all. And so, every time this comes up, there is a push by organizations like EFF, but also a bipartisan set of members in Congress, to try to get some privacy protections in it. And right now the central one is to require a warrant before searching this huge amount of data that is being collected by the NSA, especially for the FBI to need a warrant in order to search this for purposes. So, that’s the centerpiece of the fight right now, and that’s why we have this periodic reauthorization.

You know, the nomination of Bill Pulte is really a — I think it’s a — it’s a bit of a slap in the face of the national security folks who keep saying that this is a really important and serious program that could never — you know, would never be misused and is only going after stopping foreign terrorists. That’s the story they tell us overall. They keep getting caught, you know, really misusing this data and also searching far more broadly than they’re supposed to under the law. But every time, they say, “Don’t worry. We fixed it. And we’re very serious people, and we will only use this for important — you know, fighting terrorism and similar things.” And I think, you know, nominating somebody who’s got no national security experience, and instead has a pretty growing track record of being somebody who just goes after Trump’s enemies, so using this in a very political way, is, I think, just a bridge too far, even for some members of Congress who otherwise might support the program. And, you know, don’t get me wrong. EFF thinks this program should be stopped. It was started illegally, and it hasn’t gotten any better. But, you know, a simple warrant requirement shouldn’t be a very big lift. But it took this nomination of a completely unqualified guy to get enough members of Congress to really stop it. And I think it’s time to take a look and listen hard about the privacy protections that are needed, at a minimum, for this program to go forward.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, just to convey, Cindy Cohn, the scale of this program, shortly after it was established, FISA quickly became one of the top intelligence-gathering mechanisms in the country. FISA intelligence provides up to 70% of the President’s Daily Brief. And even if the law is not extended, the NSA could still continue to operate the program through March 2027. What would that mean in the context of Bill Pulte being the acting director of national intelligence? What information would he be privy to?

CINDY COHN: Well, he could be privy to anything that’s searchable in this database. The database is really — it’s a huge, huge collection of information. I mean, they say they’re only targeting foreigners abroad, but they’re really collecting, in the first instance, a much, much wider range of information, and then sorting through it with some secret ways that we really don’t have any insight into, and claiming that, in the end, they only keep things that are targeting foreigners abroad. But even on that scale, it’s a huge amount of domestic communication of Americans inside the United States. And, of course, the rest of the world deserves privacy, too. So, it’s a huge corpus of information. And since the, you know, actual work of searching through this is so secret, it’s almost impossible to know what isn’t potentially available.

But certainly, somebody who was willing to go through, you know, the mortgage records of people in order to identify potential avenues into the president’s enemies, this would be a much bigger trove of information that could be weaponized against people who the president wants targeted. And the fact that what the president said was that this could be used, you know, for some of the election claims that he’s making should be especially troubling, because those are largely domestic issues. I mean, you know, so, I think that it’s already being signaled that this information is going to be used for things that are far afield from national security or foreign intelligence narrow targets that are, you know, what it was created on the story that that was all it was going to be used for.

So, it could be a tremendously powerful tool, the collection. And you’re correct that even if the program expires, it doesn’t end. It’s already been reauthorized until March of 2027. So, even if Pulte is in there for a very short period of time, there’s a lot of damage he could do. You know, this massive national security surveillance state that was built after 9/11 has always been a threat to freedom. It’s a — it’s been a problem from the beginning, and we’ve always had this kind of, you know — 

AMY GOODMAN: And, Cindy, you —

CINDY COHN: — assurances that it would never be misused. I think that the —

AMY GOODMAN: Cindy, you articulate this so well in your book.

CINDY COHN: — warning lights should be flashing red at this point.

AMY GOODMAN: Cindy Cohn, you articulate this so well in your book, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I recommend everyone read it, Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance.

That does it for our show. We’ve been broadcasting from the studios of Sheffield Live! community TV and radio, and we are going to be at the Sheffield film festival today and tomorrow. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.