House passes key surveillance bill with deadline looming

The House on Wednesday passed legislation to reauthorize a key intelligence surveillance bill after weeks of back-and-forth tussling between members in both parties.

The passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), 278-136, comes the day after the House struck a bipartisan deal on the legislation and just before the bill is set to expire on Sunday.

Negotiators had worked for weeks, as both liberal Democrats and libertarian-leaning Republicans pushed for additional privacy protections, putting them at odds with lawmakers who wanted a clean reauthorization of the FISA bill, which they believed would easily pass in the upper chamber. Continue reading.