Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs At a Senate hearing Thursday, Tulsi Gabbard, President Donald Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, will have to convince Republican senators that she supports a surveillance program she once tried to repeal.How Gabbard handles that issue, rather than her past sympathetic comments on Russia or her controversial meeting with then-Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, could determine whether she becomes the country’s top-ranking intelligence official.As a Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii from 2013 to 2021, Gabbard called the electronic surveillance program a case of “overreach” by intelligence agencies and a violation of Americans’ civil liberties. In 2020, Gabbard and a Republican lawmaker proposed legislation to repeal section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the law that allows for the program.In an interview with Joe Rogan in 2019, she praised Edward Snowden — the former government contractor who leaked a trove of data about the 702 surveillance program — and said he should be pardoned on espionage charges because he had informed Americans about a threat to their rights. But this month, with her Senate confirmation looming, Gabbard told media outlets that she now viewed the program as a “crucial” tool and that amendments to the law adopted last year had addressed her concerns.“If confirmed as DNI, I will uphold Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights while maintaining vital national security tools like Section 702 to ensure the safety and freedom of the American people,” Gabbard said in a statement to Punchbowl News.A spokesperson for Gabbard declined to comment.Republicans hold a narrow 9-8 majority on the Senate Intelligence Committee. With Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee expected to oppose her, Gabbard will need the votes of every Republican on the panel to keep her path to confirmation alive. If the committee fails to back her, the full Senate could vote on her confirmation, but that would require a 60-vote majority — a politically improbable scenario.Tulsi Gabbard meeting with Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in 2024.Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images fileAt her hearing, Gabbard will likely face tough questions about statements she has made siding with Russia, her 2017 meeting with Assad in Damascus and her qualifications for overseeing 18 spy agencies. But her stance on the country’s vast foreign surveillance program could pose the most difficult challenge to her confirmation, congressional aides say. Gabbard’s past position on section 702 puts her in alignment with many progressive Democrats in Congress as well as libertarian-minded Republicans, but at odds with the national security hawks who dominate the Senate Intelligence Committee. Kash Patel, the president’s pick for FBI director, has been an outspoken opponent of the surveillance program.Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who voted against Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has signaled she remains skeptical that Gabbard fully supports the section 702 surveillance authorities. “Her answers to the written questions were very hedged on it,” Collins told The Hill. “I know there’s been a lot of reporting that she’s changed her position. That’s not how I read her answers. I read them as, ‘I’ll take a look at the reforms and see if they meet my concerns.’”The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board has called Gabbard’s explanation of her change of heart “hardly persuasive.”The chairman of the committee, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., an outspoken hawk and proponent of the surveillance program, said he is satisfied with Gabbard’s answers on the issue.“Tulsi Gabbard has assured me in our conversations that she supports Section 702 as recently amended and that she will follow the law and support its reauthorization as DNI,” Cotton said in an email.Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., could also be a key vote for Gabbard’s political fate. He has said little about how he views Gabbard or the surveillance issue, saying he has questions he wants to pose at Thursday’s hearing.“I am waiting for the hearing to ask questions I have. I wouldn’t characterize any of them as concerns at this point, but there are things I need to learn. There are answers I intend to elicit,” Young told reporters last week. Warrantless surveillanceU.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials under both Republican and Democratic administrations have argued the surveillance program is vital to preventing terrorist attacks, foreign espionage and cyberattacks. Civil liberties groups and members of both parties who oppose the program call it a violation of the Fourth Amendment right to be protected from arbitrary searches and intrusion.Under section 702, the U.S. government is authorized to eavesdrop on the communications of foreigners outside the country without a warrant to collect intelligence. But when eavesdropping on foreigners, U.S. agencies also often incidentally collect the communications of Americans who are in contact with the targeted foreigners. Opponents have long argued that a “finders keepers” provision of the law, which lets the government sift through Americans’ incidentally collected communications, violates Americans’ constitutional rights and that the FBI and other agencies should be required to obtain a warrant to sift through data collected on Americans.The surveillance program was first authorized in 2008 and has been extended several times since. Last April, with the program’s legal authority about to expire, Congress approved its renewal for another two years with amendments that were supposed to address concerns raised by both national security hawks and civil liberties advocates. But critics said the end result did little to change the surveillance authorities and even expanded what organizations the federal government could compel to cooperate with surveillance efforts. The new law codified rules that the FBI says it had adopted to ensure authorities have reason to retrieve information about an American whose communications are scooped up in surveillance efforts. The FBI has acknowledged a litany of mistakes in the past with agents breaking the bureau’s rules about scouring the repository of foreign intelligence surveillance data looking for Americans. The queries included a member of Congress and people who took part in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol and the 2020 racial justice protests. DNI’s role in surveillanceAs DNI, Gabbard would have an “absolutely crucial” role in overseeing how the surveillance program is carried out, according to Glenn Gerstell, who served as general counsel for the National Security Agency from 2015 to 2020.By law, every year the director of national intelligence and the attorney general are required to jointly direct intelligence agencies on the rules and procedures for how electronic surveillance will be conducted against foreign targets under the section 702 program.The rules or “certifications” define the types of foreign targets to be tracked and the procedures to be used to safeguard information from U.S. citizens who are incidentally caught up in the eavesdropping operations. The DNI and the attorney general submit those rules to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for approval.Last month, a federal judge in District Court ruled that the 702 program violated Americans’ rights and that law enforcement authorities need to get a warrant before searching the surveillance data for Americans. It’s unclear how the case will play out in the courts, but it marked the first time a judge had ruled that the searches of surveillance data required a warrant, legal experts say.
