With a looming April 30 deadline now set in stone, Senator Rick Scott is pushing for significant changes to the nation’s warrantless surveillance program, arguing that if a sitting senator can be targeted, any American can.
The Florida Republican appeared on “Fox News Sunday,” telling host Shannon Bream that Congress must “make changes” to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
The law, which allows the federal government to monitor foreigners abroad, has become a massive point of contention, effectively splitting the GOP into two camps: those demanding privacy reforms and those prioritizing national security tools.
The debate hit a fever pitch early Friday when the House unanimously passed a 10-day extension of these powers. This short-term fix came after conservative lawmakers shot down a deal for an 18-month extension. The Senate quickly followed suit, and President Trump signed the extension on Saturday, despite his earlier calls for a “clean” 18-month reauthorization without any new strings attached.
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Scott pointed out that Congress already enacted “56 substantive reforms” during the 2024 reauthorization. While groups like the Brennan Center for Justice dismissed those changes as a “continuation of the unacceptable status quo,” Scott argued the numbers show progress.
Department of Justice data indicates that queries involving Americans plummeted from 2.9 million (between late 2020 and late 2021) to just over 9,000 in the year following the renewal. Out of those 9,000 searches, only 127 were found to be noncompliant with FBI procedures.
“By every measure and review, those are working just as we planned,” Scott told Bream. “We’ve not had the abuses that were happening before those reforms.”
However, the Senator’s push for further “commonsense” changes is rooted in his own history with federal oversight.
He cited the government’s past surveillance of his former company, Columbia/HCA, during a 1997 Medicare fraud investigation that resulted in $1.7 billion in fines and his resignation.
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He also noted that the FBI obtained his phone records during “Operation Arctic Frost,” the probe into efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
“If they can target a large company CEO and a U.S. senator, they can target Americans,” Scott said. “So, we have to have some commonsense changes.”
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