A key US government surveillance tool should face new limits, a divided privacy oversight board says

The FBI and other government agencies should be required to get court approval before reviewing the communications of U.S. citizens collected through a secretive foreign surveillance program, a sharply divided privacy oversight board recommended on Thursday. The recommendation came in a report from a three-member Democratic majority of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board, an independent agency within the executive branch, and was made despite the opposition of Biden administration officials who warn that such a requirement could snarl fast-moving terrorism and espionage investigations and weaken national security as a result. The report comes as a White House push to secure the reauthorization of the program known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is encountering major bipartisan opposition in Congress and during a spate of revelations that FBI employees have periodically mishandled access to a repository of intelligence gathered under the law, violations that have spurred outrage from civil liberties advocates.