WASHINGTON (Reuters) DECEMBER 20, 2017 – Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives are working to build support to temporarily extend the National Security Agency’s expiring internet surveillance program by tucking it into a stop-gap funding measure, lawmakers said.

“I think clearly we need the reauthorization for FISA, and that is expected we’ll get that done” before the end of the year, Marc Short, the White House’s legislative director, said Wednesday on MSNBC.
U.S. intelligence officials consider Section 702 among the most vital of tools at their disposal to thwart threats to national security and American allies.
The law allows the NSA to collect vast amounts of digital communications from foreign suspects living outside the United States.
But the program incidentally gathers communications of Americans for a variety of technical reasons, including if they communicate with a foreign target living overseas.
Those communications can then be subject to searches without a warrant, including by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The House Judiciary Committee advanced a bill in November that would partially restrict the U.S. government’s ability to review American data by requiring a warrant in some cases.