美国有线新闻 CNN 美众议院更新外国情报监控法 特朗普吐槽后又点赞（在线收听）

美众议院更新外国情报监控法 特朗普吐槽后又点赞

AZUZ: The U.S. Congress is moving closer to renewing a controversial law that allows the government to collect information about people in other countries who aren't U.S. citizens. This is part of something called FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which dates back to 1978. A component of FISA passed more recently in 2008 lets U.S. intelligence officials gather email and text messages of foreigners without a warrant.

But because the information of American citizens can also be caught up in this intelligence gathering, some privacy advocates oppose the law, while its supporters say it's necessary to keep American safe.

These divisions aren't strictly along party lines. Most Republicans, including President Donald Trump, support reauthorizing the law, but dozens don't. Most Democrats don't want to reauthorize the law, but dozens do.

We say reauthorize because this part of FISA is set to expire on January 19th unless Congress renews it. And lawmakers moved a step closer to doing that yesterday when the House of Representatives voted 256-164 to renew the law.

The House votes considered a victory for the Trump administration, even though the president appeared to criticize the FISA law on Thursday morning. He tweeted that it might have been used to inappropriately collect information on his presidential campaign. Later in the morning, President Trump tweeted his support for the law, saying the vote was about, quote, foreign surveillance of foreign bad guys on foreign land and that the U.S. needed it.

Critics said the tweets caused confusion on Capitol Hill. The White House denied that, saying President Trump supports the law and was happy to see it passed in the House. Now, it goes to the Senate for its consideration, where again, support and opposition is not divided straight down party lines.