Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz is leading an effort by Republican lawmakers to pull the plug on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, commonly known as FISA.
The longtime law is set to expire at the end of this year, and Gaetz, a Fort Walton Beach Republican, and other GOP lawmakers are willing to let that happen to reduce the federal government’s capability to spy on U.S. citizens.
“I think most folks are increasingly concerned about centralized power with our national security apparatus, given how political they’ve become,” Gaetz told Fox News Digital.
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The congressman on Tuesday announced on Instagram that he had introduced a resolution that called for an end to FISA and an end to “illegal FISA surveillance of American citizens.”
“The persistent abuse of Section 702 of FISA underscores the disturbing trend of our federal government being weaponized against its people,” Gaetz said on Instagram. “The blatant misuse of warrantless surveillance powers targeting Americans’ communications should not be accepted or reauthorized.”
“We must uphold national security without sacrificing the constitutional rights of our fellow Americans.”
Earlier on Tuesday, in an interview with Fox News, Gaetz explained that his resolution went to “great lengths” to highlight that “both left-wing groups like BLM, and it’s also folks who were at the Capitol on January 6, who have seen their rights unfairly violated by FISA, and I’m equally aggrieved by both.”
Other Republicans rallying behind Gaetz on this issue include Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Paul Gosar and Eli Crane of Arizona, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, and Matt Rosendale of Montana.
On the other side, Gaetz told Fox News, “I have talked to a number of progressives in the past. We’ve been able to work with civil libertarian-minded progressives like Ro Khanna and Jerry Nadler, Zoe Lofgren.”
“I’m hoping that cleaning out these abuses won’t just be a call to the political right, but that folks on the left will see the danger in this type of abuse of power,” Gaetz continued.
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The FISA was passed in 1978 and was intended to allow the government to monitor foreign operatives overseas, often for nefarious purposes. But when those operatives contact Americans, the FBI can opt to open surveillance on them with sufficient probable cause.
But Fox News noted that the FBI admitted in May that it tapped into FISA and illegally used warrantless searches on Americans more than 278,000 times just in 2021 alone.
The FISA became a point of contention for Republicans when it became public that the FBI used the law to target one of former President Donald Trump’s campaign aides, Carter Page, during the Russia-collusion hoax. Judges in the secretive court also blasted the FBI for fudging its information in order to obtain the warrants used against Page.
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