Senate votes to extends foreign-surveillance law

— The Senate gave final congressional approval Friday to a bill renewing the government’s authority to monitor overseas phone calls and e-mails of suspected foreign spies and terrorists — but not Americans — without obtaining a court order for each intercept.

The classified Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act program was due to expire at the end of the year. The 73-23 vote sent the bill to a supportive President Barack Obama, whose signature would keep the intercept program in operation for another five years.

The Senate majority rejected arguments from an unusual combination of Democratic liberals and ideological Republican conservatives, who sought to amend the bill to require the government to reveal statistics showing whether any Americans were swept up in the foreign intercepts. The attempt lost, with 52 votes against and 43 in favor.

The Obama administration’s intelligence community and leaders of the Senate’s intelligence committee said the information should be classified and opposed the disclosure, repeating that it is illegal to target Americans without an order from a special U.S. surveillance court.

The House in September approved the same five-year extension of the law by a vote of 301-118.

Read tomorrow's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.

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