This bill adds a new rule to how the government gets permission to spy on people. When the FBI or other agencies want a court to approve wiretapping or searching someone's home, they now have to have a senior official sign off saying that they didn't rely on opposition research to justify the surveillance. In other words, if a political campaign or party did research attacking an opponent and that research ended up in the government's application to spy on someone, that's now prohibited. However, there's an exception: the government can still use information from political opposition research if they clearly identify where it came from and have also used other independent investigative methods to verify that the information is actually true. The goal is to prevent one political side from using the government's surveillance powers against their political opponents by feeding them unverified opposition research.

To amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to ensure that politically derived information is not used in an application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for an order under title I or III of such Act.

Turner, Michael R.

<p>This bill requires each application for electronic surveillance or physical search court orders under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to contain a designated senior official's certification that none of the information used in support of the application was derived solely from a political organization's research on an opposing political candidate. Such information may be used if (1) the political organization that produced the information is clearly identified, and (2) other clearly identified investigate techniques have been used to corroborate the information.</p>