President signs foreign surveillance reauthorization bill into law

President Obama signed a bill on Sunday that would reauthorize for another five years a measure that gives U.S. intelligence authorities the ability to conduct surveillance on suspected terrorists abroad without a court order.

The Senate passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Reauthorization Act last Friday despite concerns raised from some lawmakers that it needed to be amended with additional oversight and privacy protections. The law was set to expire Monday.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) last week had urged her colleagues to pass the bill without amendments so it could be sent straight to the president's desk for signature. She argued that the surveillance program had helped the intelligence community thwart planned terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and time was running out for the law to be reauthorized. 

Critics of the bill said the surveillance program lacked sufficient oversight and privacy protections for people's email and phone communications.

In a floor speech last week, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said intelligence officials have failed to provide estimates on how often U.S. citizens' email or phone communications have been swept up under the foreign surveillance program. He offered an amendment that would require intelligence agencies to report that information.

Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) also offered amendments to the bill that were aimed at beefing up the privacy protections in it. All four amendments were rejected last week.

The bill passed the Senate 73-23.