Dan Goldman Supported Warrantless Spying on Americans. Now His Primary Opponent Is Hitting Him for It. |
The House was debating a powerful National Security Agency spying program when Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., rose to side against privacy hawks.
The spring 2024 debate was over forcing the feds to get a warrant to search foreign communications for intelligence on Americans. Doing so would cost crucial time, Goldman said, citing his own tenure as a federal prosecutor.
“I can say with confidence that requiring a warrant would render this program unusable.”
“Based on that experience, I can say with confidence that requiring a warrant would render this program unusable and entirely worthless,” he said last year. “Even if it were possible, the time required to obtain a search warrant from a judge would frequently fail to meet the urgency posed by a terrorist or other national security threat.”
Goldman’s argument won the day.
Progressives had been rallying around the warrants provision but, under heavy pressure from the Biden administration, enough of them retracted their support and sided with Democrats like Goldman to doom the measure. It lost by a single vote.
With his election victory last November, Donald Trump would inherit the warrantless surveillance powers.
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The April 2024 vote still stings for civil liberties advocates, who thought they could count on progressives as they sought to build a bipartisan coalition with libertarian-minded Republicans. Now they are girding for another battle next April, when the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, is up for reauthorization.
The vote will happen in the middle of a primary season where many incumbents — including Goldman — are trying to burnish their progressive bona fides as they face challenges from the left. Already, some Democrats on a key committee are citing the Trump administration’s approach to privacy to explain their renewed support for a warrant provision.
Whether enough of them flip back could decide the future of one of the most controversial post-September 11 spying programs.
In a statement to The Intercept, Goldman did not commit to supporting a warrant requirement.
“Donald Trump’s blatant weaponization of the federal government makes accounting for potential abuses of power critically important,” Goldman said. “As we work through the FISA reauthorization process next year, I will be especially focused on those concerns, as I have been since Trump took office in January.”
Tie Goes to the Spy
The vote last year capped a monthslong period of intense lobbying pitting the Biden administration against privacy advocates.
Congress passed Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 2008 to give its legal blessing to a massive spying program the administration of George W. Bush had already launched without authorization.