The House of Representatives on Friday passed a bill to reauthorize a key surveillance tool of the U.S. government and make sweeping reforms without imposing broad restrictions on how the FBI uses this crucial program to look at U.S. data to search.

The bill, approved 273-147, now heads to the Senate, where its future is uncertain. The program is set to expire on April 19 unless Congress takes action.

Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson advanced the revised proposal, which would reform and extend a portion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act known as Section 702 for a shortened period of two years, rather than the full reauthorization of five year first proposed. Johnson hoped the shorter timeline would convince Republican critics by pushing any future debate on the issue to Donald Trump’s presidency if he wins back the White House in November.

A separate provision ending unwarranted surveillance of Americans was also offered Friday, but despite support from strange bedfellows on the far right and far left, the measure ultimately failed to get the majority of votes needed to pass the House. .

Skepticism toward government spy powers has increased dramatically in recent years, especially on the right. Republicans have clashed for months over what a legislative overhaul of the FISA surveillance program should look like, creating divisions that spilled over into the House of Representatives this week when 19 Republicans broke with their party to avoid talking about it bill would be voted on.

However, the revised proposal with a shortened timeline helped overturn some of the conservative opposition to the legislation.

The two-year time frame is a much better landing spot because it gives us two years to see if this all works, rather than throwing it out for five years, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said Thursday. “They say these reforms will work. Well, we’ll have to find out.

The legislation in question would allow the U.S. government to collect, without a warrant, the communications of non-Americans who are outside the country to gather foreign intelligence. The reauthorization is currently tied to a series of reforms aimed at appeasing critics who complained about civil liberties violations against Americans.

But far-right opponents have complained that those changes did not go far enough. The vocal opponents include some of Johnson’s fiercest critics, members of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, who have protested the speaker in recent months for reaching across the aisle to carry out the basic functions of government.

To appease some of those critics, Johnson also plans to introduce a separate proposal next week that would close a loophole that allows U.S. officials to collect data on Americans from big tech companies without a warrant.

All of that added up to something that I think was more comforting, Roy said.

Although the program technically expires next Friday, the Biden administration has said it expects its intelligence-gathering authority to remain operational for at least another year, thanks to an opinion earlier this month from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which receives surveillance requests. . But officials say court approval should not be a substitute for congressional approval, especially because communications companies could stop working with the government.

The spy tool was first approved in 2008 and has been renewed several times since, as U.S. officials see it as crucial in disrupting terror attacks, cyber intrusions and foreign espionage. It has also provided intelligence that the US has relied on for specific operations.

But the administration’s efforts to secure the program’s reauthorization have repeatedly been met with fierce and bipartisan opposition, with Democrats like Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, who have long advocated for civil liberties, joining Republican supporters of the former President Trump, who falsely stated in a post on Truth Social on Wednesday that Section 702 had been used to spy on his presidential campaign.

A former adviser to his 2016 presidential campaign was being monitored under a different section of the law over possible ties to Russia.

A specific concern for the legislation is the FBI’s use of its vast intelligence repository to seek information about Americans and others in the US. Although the surveillance program only targets non-Americans in other countries, it also collects communications from Americans when they are in contact with the targeted foreigners.

Over the past year, US officials have exposed a series of abuses and errors by FBI analysts in inappropriately searching the intelligence repository for information about Americans or others in the US, including a member of Congress and participants in the protests against racial justice of 2020 and the January 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol.

These violations have led to demands for the FBI to issue a warrant before conducting database queries on Americans, which FBI Director Chris Wray has warned would effectively undermine the program’s effectiveness and would also be legally unnecessary, as the information in the database has already been lawfully released. collected.

While it is imperative that we ensure that this critical 702 authority does not lapse, we must also not undermine the effectiveness of this vital tool with a command requirement or similar restriction, thereby crippling our ability to address fast-moving threats, Wray said in a speech Tuesday.

Amiri and Tucker write for the Associated Press. AP writer Kevin Freking contributed to this report.