Late last year, Congress elected to punt the issue of FISA renewal – the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that was designed to surveil terrorists in foreign countries, and has since been horrendously abused by the US intelligence community to target Americans – including former President Donald Trump.

Now, they have 9 days to go to come up with a permanent replacement. To that end, House Speaker Mike Johnson put forth “RISAA” – a bill backed by Ohio Rep. Mike Turner and the intelligence committee, and just passed through the House Rules Committee – where a final floor vote will likely take place on Thursday.

Privacy hawks, however, point out that it’s a steaming pile of shit with no meaningful language to protect privacy rights – except for members of Congress, who gave themselves a carve out which requires the FBI to notify and seek consent from Congress before spying on them.

What’s more, critics say the RISAA essentially codifies surveillance abuses into law.

Under Section 702 of the FISA, the government is authorized to gather foreigners’ communications if they have been flagged in connection with national security matters. The communications can be gathered even if the target was speaking about, or with, Americans.

“Speaker of the House Mike Johnson claims that RISAA reflects a compromise,” reads a joint statement from the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Brennan Center for Justice and Freedomworks. “In reality, this bill is not a ‘compromise,’ and its 56 ‘reforms’ codify the unacceptable status quo.”

The bill has also caused a rift within the Republican party over privacy rights. As the Daily Caller‘s Reagan Reese notes:

The GOP is divided into two broad camps over various proposed reforms, perhaps most notably a warrant requirement. National security hawks aligned with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence have expressed more opposition to the requirement and other privacy-minded reforms — members aligned with the Judiciary Committee are stressing that FISA must no longer be a tool that can be used to spy on Americans, like what happened with the Trump campaign. -Daily Caller

“It’s delicate right now. The place is about to combust,” one GOP source told the Caller on Monday.

ZeroHedge