A controversial surveillance authority played a vital role in State Department’s ability to learn about and warn international partners and U.S. businesses about North Korea’s efforts to commit digital fraud to fund its nuclear program, a senior state department official said Tuesday.
The revelation about the 2022 scheme comes as the State Department joins the intelligence community, the Justice Department, and the White House in pushing for Congress to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act before its sunset at the end of this year.
While other officials have focused primarily on the surveillance tool’s importance in combatting nation-state threats, Brett Holmgren, the State Department’s assistant secretary for its Bureau of Intelligence and Research, emphasized how crucial the tool is to diplomatic efforts.
“From Russia, China, Iran and North Korea to foreign influence and cyber threats, 702 reporting provides our analysts with unique insights that when combined with other sources of information, make our policymakers better informed about the issues so they can make better decisions,” he said at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event in Washington on Tuesday.
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Section 702 of the FISA Act allows intelligence agencies to collect domestic communications of non-U.S. citizens. While the authority does not allow for the collection of Americans’ data, that information is often swept up in searches and can then later be queried under certain conditions.
In addition to North Korean IT fraud, Holmgren pointed to a variety of State Department issues including human rights work. He noted that Section 702 intelligence directly enabled diplomats to act against a Middle Eastern state in 2021 that was surveilling and tracking dissidents abroad. More broadly, the information has enabled the department to monitor “Russian atrocities” in Ukraine and share intelligence ..
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