WASHINGTON — Over the ongoing objections of Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the Senate Select Intelligence Committee endorsed a five-year extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act during a closed hearing Tuesday.

The 13-2 vote to send the extension to the full Senate for a vote was announced by Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., the committee’s chair and ranking member, respectively.

Wyden has opposed the reauthorization of the secret law until the intelligence community provides more information about how it is being implemented. Spokeswoman Jennifer Hoelzer confirmed that Wyden voted not to pass the bill out of committee, but she declined to comment more specifically about the extension.

“We’ve been told by Sen. Feinstein’s staff that under the SSCI’s Committee Rule 9.3, members and staff are prohibited from discussing the markup or describing the contents of the bill until the official committee report is released, and that the fact that they’ve already put out a press release does not lift this prohibition,” she said.

Generally, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, authorizes the government’s covert surveillance of foreign agents and entities. After revelations that the government was conducting widespread warrantless domestic wiretapping, Congress in 2008 passed the FISA Amendment Act, which clarified the circumstances and authority surrounding the government’s intelligence gathering that includes monitoring phone and electronic communications.

Wyden has argued previously that FISA should not be reauthorized unless intelligence officials describe whether electronic communications or other private information of law-abiding American citizens has been collected as part of national security sweeps.

The FISA Amendment Act is set to expire in December 2012. The current reauthorization bill would extend it until June 1, 2017.

‘Congress should know’

“That’s too long, given that Congress still does not know how these authorities are impacting law-abiding American citizens,” Hoelzer said. “We believe that Congress should know how the laws it writes are working — and if they are working as intended — before it reauthorizes them.”

Wyden also has “concerns about how those (intercepted) communications are being used, (including) as a possible back door to conduct surveillance on Americans without a warrant,” said Hoelzer.

Last year, Wyden and Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo. — who is also on the Select Intelligence Committee — asked the director of national intelligence to clarify how many American citizens have had their communications reviewed under FISA. They were told it was “not reasonably possible to identify the number of people” and that the government’s interpretation of parts of the Patriot Act and FISA is classified.

Oversight mechanism

In a Tuesday news release, Feinstein and Chambliss said the committee reviewed the oversight mechanisms in place to protect privacy, including reports from the Department of Justice, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Security Agency and the FBI. The committee also has received assurances that the intelligence community will provide additional information that was not previously required regarding the law’s implementation, they said.

“The bill we approved today extends critical counterterrorism and intelligence gathering tools for the intelligence community,” Feinstein and Chambliss said in a joint statement. “The committee has determined that these provisions provide intelligence to identify terrorist operatives and to understand the intentions of our adversaries around the world. These authorities cannot be allowed to expire and we urge quick action by the Senate and House to enact this extension.”