Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Wednesday that the United States government has gained “vitally important” intelligence about the war in Ukraine from a surveillance law that allows the government to collect foreign communications without a warrant.
The law, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, enables the US government to obtain intelligence by targeting non-Americans overseas who are using US-based communications services.
“When it comes to this conflict and what Russia is doing in Ukraine, it has proved vitally important,” Monaco said Wednesday to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Section 702 “has helped us uncover gruesome atrocities in Ukraine, including the murder of noncombatants, the forced relocation of children from Russian-occupied Ukraine to Russia, and the detention of refugees fleeing violence by Russian personnel.”
Monaco’s comments come amid an ongoing battle over whether to reauthorize the law, which is set to sunset at the end of 2023. The law has previously garnered bipartisan backing, although that support has frayed over the past several years over scrutiny for alleged misuse.
The searches are governed by a set of internal rules and procedures designed to protect Americans’ privacy and civil liberties, but critics say that loopholes allow the program to look through the emails and other communications of American citizens – as opposed to foreign adversaries – without proper justification.
However, Monaco said that losing Section 702 would hamper the department’s efforts to hold Russia accountable because the information the department has uncovered from the law “has helped us as a country and as a national security community galvanize accountability efforts regarding Ukraine by allowing us to confidently and accurately speak with the international community about Russian atrocities.”
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