privacy

London, United Kingdom – Should Andy Burnham enter Downing Street as early as July 17, if he is confirmed unopposed as Labour leader, one of his most consequential early decisions will have nothing to do with defence spending, immigration, or the economy.

It will concern a seven-year 330-million-pound ($440m) contract between NHS England and Palantir Technologies, a leading defence and intelligence software firm in the United States that received no contracts from Burnham’s Greater Manchester administration during his nine years as mayor.

The ramifications of such a decision could extend well beyond the NHS.

Media reports surfaced last week that Burnham is minded to hold that line with Palantir across all of the UK government when he arrives in Downing Street.

When approached by Al Jazeera, an Andy Burnham spokesperson said: “We’re not going to comment on individual government procurement contracts or companies and there are legal processes that must be followed.

“However, in general, Andy’s guiding principles on procurement are that we need to be getting value for money for the taxpayer and that we need to be safeguarding people’s data and British interests.”

For a company that has spent six years embedding itself across several public sector entities – the NHS, the Ministry of Defence, the Home Office, the Financial Conduct Authority – that posture is a real shift from the outgoing Labour administration led by Keir Starmer.

Starmer’s government actively courted US-based AI companies championed by the former UK ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson.

According to the Financial Times, which cited people briefed on the discussions, Burnham’s advisers, including former tech minister Josh Simons, are working with researchers Antonio Weiss and Martha Dacombe on a new AI strategy prioritising British companies and workers.

The story of how we got here runs through Manchester.

The Manchester precedent

Burnham served as Mayor of Greater Manchester from 2017 until June, when he returned to Westminster via the Makerfield by-election.

Under his leadership, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority issued no contracts to Palantir. Greater Manchester Police has separately confirmed it did not have a Palantir contract in the past five years.

The more instructive precedent, though, is in the NHS – an institution Burnham has no direct mayoral authority over, but shaped politically through Greater Manchester’s landmark health devolution settlement.

Rather than adopt the NHS England-mandated Federated Data Platform, built on Palantir’s Foundry software, Greater Manchester’s NHS leaders spent six years building their own analytics infrastructure instead. That became a proof of concept, which allies now cite nationally: effective NHS data management, they argue, does not require Palantir.

In May, Al Jazeera spoke to the Good Law Project about its concerns that Palantir was a “potential security risk”.

Some campaigners have interpreted recent political signalling from Burnham’s camp as supportive of their position, although a Good Law Project spokesperson said it has had no direct contact with him or his team.

The political context

In his first major speech since returning to Westminster as an MP, Burnham said he wanted social value to weigh more heavily in government procurement decisions. The reasoning, according to those close to him, is as much political as ethical.

Reports have described concern within his camp that “unfettered tech boosterism” risks alienating voters already uneasy about how much of the state now runs on American software.

Underneath that concern sits a more specific worry: that a company built to serve defence and intelligence clients does not necessarily share the values of an institution built to treat patients.

“A defence company has inherently different values than a healthcare organisation like the NHS,” said Duncan McCann, Technology and Data Lead at the Good Law Project, which has led legal action seeking greater transparency over the contract. “That’s where I think this concern was created.”

Palantir is not unique in this respect. Its origins in US defence and intelligence contracting are shared, to varying degrees, by most of the US AI firms now supplying British government departments – a lineage that, for critics like McCann, taints the whole category rather than one company alone.

What’s next?

The NHS contract is the most visible, but it is unlikely to be the only one making headlines this year.

A parallel battle is already under way in London, where Palantir has launched a High Court challenge after Mayor Sadiq Khan blocked a 50-million pound ($67m) Metropolitan Police contract, arguing the decision amounts to stifling free speech.

Khan’s office has since approved a smaller arrangement – a partial reversal that has done little to settle the underlying tension.

For campaigners who have spent years pushing for greater scrutiny of Palantir’s role in British public life, Burnham’s ascent could be the moment the tide finally turns. The NHS break clause falls in March 2027, but a decision needs to be made by December.

Burnham is expected in Downing Street later this month. He will soon decide whether Palantir has a future in Britain’s health service – and, by extension, in the rest of the UK’s public sector.

Al Jazeera reached out to Palantir for comment but had not received a response at the time of publishing.

The app said it will be rolling out usernames gradually, in a move meant to improve privacy.

Change is coming for some three billion users of the world’s favourite messaging platform, WhatsApp.

The social media app owned by Meta will allow users to be identified by usernames instead of phone numbers, it said on Monday. WhatsApp is used in more than 180 countries and 60 languages, the platform says.

Users will soon be able to reserve unique handles, with a wider rollout planned for later this year.

The move is designed to improve privacy on the platform amid longstanding scrutiny over its data protection practices.

So what is changing, and how can you grab a handle no one else has?

What change has WhatsApp announced?

Users will soon be able to swap the phone numbers displayed on WhatsApp with usernames, the company said. Under the new system, which will commence later this year, users will be able to choose to be “findable” and contacted by their handles only.

The app said it has already begun allowing some users to reserve unique usernames before a bigger rollout later this year.

Why is WhatsApp making this change?

The messaging platform said the change is designed to improve privacy features, for which it and its parent company Meta have come under scrutiny in the past.

“We have designed this as a core privacy feature,” Alice Newton-Rex, WhatsApp’s vice president of product, told reporters.

According to the company, there will be no public directory of usernames and no autocomplete suggestions, meaning users will need to know someone’s exact username to reach them for the first time.

“When someone new walks into your life – a classmate, a neighbour, someone you meet at an event – sharing a phone number can feel like a big step,” a WhatsApp company blog post stated.

“That’s because a phone number is personal and it’s tied to so many parts of your life. Sometimes you just want to chat without handing over your digits.”

The company told one user on X that it has added multiple new features to help users defend themselves from scammers.

Optional username keys – or short numbered codes – can be added, which would mean people can only contact a user if they have both their username and its key, for example.

WhatsApp also said it will limit the number of new people any one account can contact as a guard against spam accounts, and that its systems can now detect and block “abuse patterns”.

How will the new usernames work?

Companies, organisations and creators with existing accounts on Meta’s other social media platforms – Instagram and Facebook – will have the opportunity to claim their usernames as handles on WhatsApp as well.

Usernames will have to be three to 35 characters. To prevent impersonation, WhatsApp will hold back usernames for high-profile people or groups, such as celebrities, public figures and government entities.

To reserve a specific username, WhatsApp said a user must download the latest version of WhatsApp, go to the Settings tab, the Account tab, and then the Username tab.

The reservation must be done with a smartphone – it cannot be done on WhatsApp Web or Desktop.

When will this change come into effect?

WhatsApp said it will roll out usernames gradually over the coming months and will notify users on WhatsApp when the new feature is available in their country. It has not given specific timelines.

To be prepared, the company told users to “make sure you have the latest version of WhatsApp downloaded and keep an eye on your app”.

What are WhatsApp’s current privacy features?

WhatsApp’s current privacy settings are limited to blocking individual users and silencing unknown callers.

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court cast doubt Monday on whether police may obtain cellphone data to find crime suspects.

In a 6-3 decision, the justices said this location data showing where a cellphone user has traveled is personal and private and subject to the protection of the 4th Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches.

Justice Elena Kagan said these “records serve as a personal journal of a user’s movements.”

She said the data “resembles other private materials—think of emails, documents, photographs, or calendars—that even if stored on Google’s servers, a user reasonably views as his own…and reasonably expects to be shielded from the inquisitive eyes of the government.”

Because an “individual has a legitimate expectation of privacy in his cellphone location data,” she said police investigators need a valid search warrant from a magistrate.

The court stopped short of deciding the proper basis for a search warrant in such cases. Instead, the justices sent the case back to judges in Virginia.

But the outcome casts doubt on “geofence warrants.”

In recent years, police have gone to Google and cellphone companies seeking tracking data on cellphones that were at a crime scene. Some times, they have had a warrant from a magistrate.

Civil libertarians say the use of this tracking data raises the specter of mass surveillance on innocent people.

Police and government lawyers say no one has a reasonable right to privacy when they are walking on a sidewalk or driving down the street.

The case before the court arose from the armed robbery conviction of a Virginia man who stole $195,000 from a credit union in a small town near Richmond.

By the time police arrived, the robber had fled. But surveillance cameras showed he was carrying a gun and a cellphone.

Lacking other leads, detective Joshua Hilton asked a judge to issue a special type of warrant seeking information from Google.
Referred to as a “geofence warrant,” it seeks data from phones in a particular area at a particular time.

The detective sought data on phones that were within 150 yards of the credit union within one hour of the late afternoon robbery.

After examining and paring down the data, the detective asked for the phone records of Okello Chatrie. Then, with a search warrant of his home, investigators found two robbery-style demand notes, a semi-automatic pistol and about $100,000 in cash.

A judge refused to suppress the evidence from an allegedly unconstitutional “search”, and Chatrie entered a conditional guilty plea.
The full 4th Circuit Court of Appeals split evenly on the legality of the geofence warrant, and the Supreme Court agreed to decide the issue in Chatrie vs. U.S.

Usually investigators obtain warrants to search the home or vehicle of a known crime suspect.

The new and disputed geofence warrrants seek to find a suspect by examining data on the cellphones that were at the scene of a crime.

The FBI used this cellphone data in 2021 to identify suspects who broke through police barracks on Jan. 6, 2021, and pushed their way into the Capitol to disrupt the official counting of electoral votes.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson agreed on the outcome in Chatrie vs. U.S.

In a 21-page dissent, Justice Samuel A. Alito said the court had “carefully set the stage for its planned performance: striking a pose as a great champion of privacy in the digital age. I cannot support this irresponsible escapade.”

Justice Clarence Thomas agreed.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett agreed in a one-paragraph dissent. “Chatrie had no reasonable expectation of privacy in data about his public movements that he voluntarily disclosed to Google,” she said.

Meta has paused a new company-wide program of tracking its employees’ computer usage which has been plagued by internal frustration.

The program was started only two months ago as part of an effort by Meta to gather data on how people used computers, including mouse clicks and keystrokes, that could be used to train artificial intelligence (AI) models.

It was met immediately with upset from employees who were to have their every online action at work tracked and recorded, but also concerned about where the data was going and how it would be protected.

Meta halted the program on Monday after realising some of the collected data had been left potentially accessible to anyone inside the company.

A Meta spokesman confirmed to the BBC that the program, named internally the Model Capability Initiative (MCI), was “on pause for now” as the company investigates the issue.

“We have no indication at this time that any data was improperly accessed by Meta employees,” the spokesman added.

The pause follows weeks of blow-back from workers at the company, led by billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, to being tracked at work.

In an initial response to worker frustration – which was displayed in part through a petition signed by nearly 2,000 Meta workers demanding that the MCI program be cancelled – Meta said it would allow workers to not be tracked for up to 30 minutes at a time.

“That was just an attempt at damage control,” one current employee told the BBC. The person asked not to be identified.

Another Meta employee, who also asked not to be identified, said that while a lot of technical workers inside the company are open to the idea of improving its AI models and being more competitive in a field dominated by Anthropic and OpenAI, the fact that tracking “was forced on us, there was no consent” left people angry.

“I’ve never seen morale here so bad,” the employee said.

In addition to the tracking program, frustration inside Meta has grown as it has done extensive layoffs, and reorganised many employees and their work around AI initiatives, on which the company is spending up to $145bn (£109bn) this year alone.

Employees have even openly insulted management, external in an internal meeting on the AI-driven changes, according to a report in Wired.

While Meta has long had a reputation in the technology industry as a company that frequently reorganises internal teams around new projects, the changes and spending in an effort to catch up on AI feels like “chasing your tail”, a person who recently left Meta after several years said.

“The direction this company is going in is depressing”, the former employee said. “Exhausting and depressing.”

A visitor has filed a $5-million lawsuit against Disneyland for allegedly failing to properly disclose the use of facial-recognition technology at park and collecting sensitive data on guests.

Summer Christine Duffield of Riverside County filed the lawsuit after a May 10 visit to Disneyland and sister park California Adventure, alleging that the resort violates privacy and consumer protection laws collecting biometric data of visitors, without adequate consent.

“Disney does not adequately disclose the use of their biometric collection, so consumers — which almost always include children — have no idea that Disney is collecting this highly sensitive data,” the plaintiff noted in the lawsuit. “Guests should be able to expressly opt in to this type of sensitive facial recognition technology with written consent — the onus of privacy rights should not be on the victim.”

The suit was filed on May 15 in U.S. District Court in New York. The lawsuit cites an article from The Times on consumer reaction to Disney’s use of facial recognition.

The Walt Disney Company didn’t respond to a request for comment.

“People are getting fed up with being force-fed new tech, new AI, new tracking tools,” said Ari Waldman, Professor of Law at the UC Irvine.

Walt Disney Co. rolled out its facial recognition technology in late April across Disneyland Resort to verify tickets. The way it works is guests’ faces are scanned, converted into a numerical identifier and matched with ticket data.

Disney’s privacy policy notes that the identifiers created for identification are deleted within 30 days unless they need to be kept for legal or fraud prevention purposes.

Guests who don’t want to use the technology can enter through a separate entrance marked with a silhouette of a head and shoulders with a slash through it. However, of the dozens of lines to enter Disneyland and California Adventure, there were only four that didn’t use facial recognition, during an April visit.

The sign saying “Use of this technology is optional,” adorn the security checkpoint entrances.

“This technology facilitates ease of reentry into our parks and helps prevent fraud,” the company noted in its website.

Use of facial recognition technology for crowd management and ticketing has become increasingly commonplace.

Dodger Stadium deploys facial recognition for guests using the “Go Ahead Entry” at certain gates without producing a physical or digital ticket to enter the stadium. At Intuit Dome in Inglewood, visitors can use “GameFaceID” to quickly move through a separate lane with their face as their ID.

The lawsuit comes at a time when there is increasing concern of surveillance in public places, and privacy advocates have rallied against the normalization of surveillance. More recently, concerns of the potentially abusive use of artificial intelligence by government to analyze large quantities of data — from texts to facial scans — to surveil U.S citizens resulted in a high-profile showdown between the Pentagon and Anthropic.

WASHINGTON — Retired Gen. Colin L. Powell, citing concerns about his privacy and a lack of passion for political combat, on Wednesday proclaimed that he would not run for President in 1996.

For the first time, Powell declared that he was a Republican. And he seemed clearly to leave open the possibility of seeking political office in the future. But he categorically ruled out accepting the vice presidential nomination next year.

In a dramatic afternoon press conference in suburban Washington, Powell, 58, said that entering the political arena “requires a calling that I do not yet hear. And for me to pretend otherwise would not be honest to myself, it would not be honest to the American people.”

“And therefore I cannot go forward,” he said. “I will not be a candidate for President or for any other elective office in 1996.”

Powell’s wife, Alma, stood at his side as he ended months of suspense about his political intentions and disappointed millions of potential supporters. His adult children, Michael, Linda and Annemarie, looked on in the packed hotel ballroom where Powell delivered his fateful verdict.

“I have spent long hours talking with my wife and children, the most important people in my life, about the impact an entry into political life would have on us,” Powell said. “It would require sacrifices and changes in our lives that would be difficult for us to make at this time.”

With the September publication of his best-selling memoirs, “My American Journey,” Powell had become a four-star American icon, the repository of the hopes of millions who dreamed that he could bind up the nation’s racial and political wounds.

But in the end, that task proved too great even for the charismatic general, who braved unfriendly fire in Vietnam and survived the ordeals of bureaucratic combat in four presidential administrations.

Powell said Wednesday he hoped he could help restore civility to American political dialogue and a “sense of shame in our society.” He also said he hoped to bring blacks back into the party by broadening the GOP’s appeal and humanizing its attempts to reform social welfare programs.

“While we’re sending out block grants, while we’re dismantling programs that have not completely satisfied everything we hoped of them, we have to concern ourselves about those who may be cut loose, and we have to be prepared to help them,” Powell said. Over the past months, “I didn’t sense there was enough consideration of that.”

“I will continue to speak out forcefully in the future on the issues of the day, as I have been doing in recent weeks,” Powell said. “I believe I can help the party of Lincoln move once again close to the spirit of Lincoln.”

But–for now–he said he would do so from outside the realm of electoral politics.

Powell largely came to his decision over the weekend and formalized it in a meeting Monday night with two of his closest friends, former Pentagon official Richard L. Armitage and former White House Chief of Staff Kenneth M. Duberstein. With a third aide, retired Col. Bill Smullen, joining in by phone, the three men sat in Powell’s formal office on the ground floor of his McLean, Va., mansion, a room dominated by his Medal of Freedom and three framed photographs of the presidents he has served–Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Bill Clinton.

Alma Powell joined the group about halfway through the 2 1/2-hour meeting, Armitage said in an interview Wednesday.

“By then, the decision was primarily made,” Armitage said. “Over these past weeks, he was up and down, he agonized. He’d go out and meet with crowds and they’d fire him up. Then he’d get back home and wonder, ‘Do I have the necessary fire in the stomach to be worthy of support of these people?’ And he found he did not,” Armitage said.

As it became clear that Powell would not run, the meeting moved quickly to a discussion of the logistics of the announcement. The four discussed various drafts of a statement, then decided that Powell should speak solely in his own words. On Wednesday afternoon, he did just that, speaking largely without reference to the note cards he had carried with him.

He had looked “deep into my own soul” before deciding not to run, Powell said, and had found that he could not summon up the “commitment and passion” he felt every day in his 35 years as a soldier.

Powell also pointedly refused to endorse any of the Republican candidates, or even the party’s eventual nominee. He answered a curt “yes” to the question of whether there were candidates in the current crop of GOP hopefuls who were unacceptable to him.

A close friend said later that Powell was referring specifically to Patrick J. Buchanan, who has harshly criticized Powell’s stands on social issues.

Powell’s decision reopens a presidential contest that had been largely frozen for the last two months as he flirted with running.

Within an hour of Powell’s announcement, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said that the former general’s withdrawal made it more likely that he would enter the race. Gingrich said he would think about it over the next several weeks and make a decision after the current federal budget deliberations are finished but before the Dec. 15 deadline for entering New Hampshire’s primary.

Powell’s withdrawal was particularly welcome news at the White House and at the headquarters of GOP presidential front-runner Sen. Bob Dole. In a statement, Dole praised Powell’s “outstanding character and leadership” and expressed pleasure that he had joined the Republican Party.

At the White House, aides showed unusual discipline in not admitting that they felt a huge sense of relief at not having to face Clinton’s worst nightmare–a black, centrist, Republican military hero–in the general election next year.

“Everyone wants some hook to say there was a sigh of relief at the White House–but you’ll have to do it on your own,” said White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry.

He added that Clinton “understands the decision to run for President of the United States is one of the most difficult decisions any human can make. He respects the general and respects the general’s right to make that decision.”

Powell met with the press for 40 minutes at the Ramada Plaza hotel in Alexandria, Va., a few miles down the George Washington Parkway from the Pentagon, where Powell made history by becoming the first African American and youngest chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

His appearance was marked by the good humor, military carriage and unshakable poise he displayed in private meetings with presidents, kings and prime ministers and in public briefings on the American military operations he directed.

He expressed gratitude to the thousands of citizens who urged him to run. “It says more about America than it says about me. In one generation, we have moved from denying a black man service at a lunch counter to elevating one to the highest military office in the nation and to being a serious contender for the presidency,” he said.

Powell drew laughs when asked whether his wife shared his enthusiasm for the Republican Party. “Next!” he boomed. He also fended off a question about whether he had been bothered by published reports that his wife was under treatment for depression.

“It is not a family secret,” he said. “It is very easily controlled with proper medication, just as my blood pressure is sometimes under control with proper medication.”

For her part, Alma Powell made clear her concerns about her husband’s safety should he become a candidate. She and the general denied that fears of assassination were a factor in his decision not to run, but the final call was not made until Monday night, the day slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was buried in Jerusalem.

Had he been elected, Powell said, his priorities in office would have been: “Show leadership. Be a conciliator. Move the government forward toward less government. . . . Try to inspire people. And try to restore a sense of family, restore a sense of shame in our society, help bring more civility into our society.”

Powell said he regretted the disappointment he caused those who enthusiastically promoted his candidacy.

“I am deeply, deeply appreciative of that support, I’m deeply appreciative of the time and talent and energy you put into it. I’m sorry I disappointed you, but I hope you will see that in the next phase of my life I will continue to serve the country in a way that will justify the kind of inspiration and enthusiasm and support you sent my way this time around,” Powell said, addressing the several dozen supporters who attended the press conference and millions more watching on television.

He said he understood the “down and dirty” of American politics and said they were a proper test of a potential leader. He said he was not afraid of that “test of fire,” but that he was not yet ready to face it.

Among those watching on television were about half a dozen disheartened volunteers at the draft-Powell headquarters in the Crenshaw district in Los Angeles. The group, which had just opened the office last week, vowed to launch an effort to change Powell’s mind. Through letters, phone calls and other means, they hope to persuade the retired general “to report for duty as a candidate for the presidency,” said Powell backer Ron Weekly.

Times staff writers Sam Fulwood III in Washington and Erin Texeira in Los Angeles contributed to this story.

* LOCAL REACTION: General’s Orange County kin pleased with his decision. A17

WASHINGTON  — A divided Supreme Court heard arguments Monday on whether the police use of phone tracking data violates the Constitution’s protection against “unreasonable searches.”

Most of the justices sounded wary of barring investigators from obtaining precise location history from Google or cellphone providers if it helps find a murderer or a bank robber.

“I’m trying to figure out why this was bad police work,” Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh told an attorney representing the defendant, Odell Chatrie.

He said a police detective in Virginia was seeking clues to find a bank robber and sought a “geofence warrant” from a judge that told Google to turn over data from phones that were near the bank during the hour of the robbery.

“In the end, he got three names,” Kavanaugh said, including Chatrie, who pleaded guilty. He said these searches have proved to be practical for finding criminals.

But other justices said the court should not rule broadly to endorse digital searches of vast data bases held by private companies.

What about emails or Google photos, asked Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett.

All three said this information deserves more privacy protection than location data.

In the past, the court has said the 4th Amendment protects against government searches that intrude upon a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” The two sides in this case differ on whether a digital search of location data violates privacy rights.

Gorsuch said he was generally skeptical of broad searches if the government had no particular suspect.

Is it OK to search “all the rooms in a hotel for a gun or all the storage units or all bank deposit boxes for the pearl necklace that has been stolen?” he asked.

Eric Feigin, a deputy solicitor general, said the government probably could not obtain a search warrant for all storage units or hotel rooms, but a Google search is different because it is a software filter.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. proposed a narrow ruling.

Perhaps unwittingly, Chatrie had agreed to have Google store his location history data. Roberts said he could have turned off the public location data, and for that reason, he may have lost his right to appeal.

“If you don’t want the government to have your location history, you just flip that off,” he said.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. agreed. Chatrie “voluntarily disclosed to Google the information about where he was going to be,” he said.

Eight years ago, Roberts wrote an opinion for a 5-4 majority that said investigators needed a search warrant before they could obtain 127 days of cell tower records that helped convict a Michigan man of several store robberies.

Four of the court’s liberal justices joined that majority, but only two of them — Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — remain on the court.

Since then, Kavanaugh, Barrett and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson have joined the court.

The National Assn. of Criminal Defense Lawyers and other civil liberties groups backed Chatrie’s challenge to the government’s use of geofence warrants.

Chatrie had “a reasonable expectation of privacy in his location history given both its sensitive and revealing nature and the fact that it was stored in his password-protected account,” Washington attorney Adam Unikowski told the court. “There was not probable cause to search the virtual private papers of every single person within the geofence merely because of their proximity to the crime.”

Feigin, the Justice Department attorney, said a ruling for Chatrie “would impede the investigation of kidnappings, robberies, shootings and other crimes.”

He agreed, however, that email should be protected because it involves personal communication.

The justices will hand down a ruling in Chatrie vs. U.S. by the end of June.

The measure has long been criticised for allowing US intelligence agencies to collect citizen data without a warrant.

The United States Congress has temporarily extended a controversial surveillance law which allows federal intelligence agencies to collect the data of foreigners, including their contacts with US citizens.

The move allows a provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to continue until April 30. The short-term extension was passed by the House of Representatives and approved by the Senate on Friday.

The patch comes after President Donald Trump’s efforts to secure a more lasting extension broke down.

Section 702 of FISA allows the National Security Agency (NSA) and other intelligence services to collect data from foreigners outside of the country.

That could include their interactions with US citizens, a prospect that has alarmed rights advocates.

Collecting such data, which can include correspondence on email and telecommunications platforms, typically requires a warrant approved by a court.

The process has been described by critics as a “backdoor search” that circumvents existing privacy laws.

Speaking after Friday’s vote, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said there was still some openness to reforming the law.

“We’ve got to pivot and figure out what can pass, and we’re in the process ⁠of figuring out how to do that here,” he told reporters.

Supporters of reform, who stretch across party lines, have long sought to repeal or amend Section 702.

While FISA was initially passed in 1978, Section 702 was added as an amendment in 2008.

The addition came amid the US’s “global war on terror”. But during its approval, revelations emerged that the administration of former US President George W Bush had already used the tactics Section 702 legalised.

Supporters, including Trump, maintain that reforming the provision would lead to a lapse in national security.

“I have spoken with many in our Military who say FISA is necessary in order to protect our Troops overseas, as well as our people here at home, from the threat of Foreign Terror Attacks,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Wednesday.

He has pushed for the law to be extended for 18 months without changes. That effort initially appeared on track in the House but was ultimately scuttled by pushback from within Trump’s own Republican Party.

Among the detractors was Republican Congressman Thomas Massie, who has been a regular critic of Trump.

“I will be voting NO on final passage of the FISA 702 Reauthorization Bill if it does not include a warrant provision and other reforms to protect US citizens’ right to privacy,” he wrote ahead of the House vote.