US officials want Section 702 renewed before damaging court ruling goes public

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Two Democratic senators who have long overseen US intelligence say the Trump administration is illegally withholding a secret court’s findings from Congress until lawmakers renew a program that lets federal agents read Americans’ communications without a warrant.
Seven months ago, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court objected to search filters that let intelligence analysts pull Americans’ messages from intercepted data without the approvals, written justifications, or records the law requires. The court approved another year of surveillance anyway. The ruling has never been made public, and Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Adam Schiff of California say the administration’s own deadline for releasing it passed in September.
The program, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), lapsed in June after Congress failed to renew it, though collection continues under the court’s March approval. The administration’s own public documentation says rulings like this one are reviewed for public release “within 180 days of issuance.” That window closed September 13, even as intelligence officials press lawmakers to reauthorize the program by the end of the year.
Wyden, the longest-serving member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Schiff, the former chair of its House counterpart, say the administration owes Congress an explanation for the delay, and the names of the officials responsible, by November 6.
“If this administration won’t follow this simple statutory directive,” the senators told Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton and Attorney General Todd Blanche in a demand letter obtained exclusively by WIRED, “it is unclear why Congress or the American people should trust this administration to follow any of the other legal limits to Section 702.”
Outside Congress, Demand Progress and 22 other civil liberties and government accountability groups on Monday urged congressional leaders to refuse to reauthorize Section 702 “while the administration actively withholds legally mandated information about how the surveillance program operates.” Signatories range from the American Civil Liberties Union to the conservative-backed Project for Privacy and Surveillance Accountability.

document fetched 2026-10-28 02:52 · canonical https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/10/us-officials-want-section-702-renewed-before-damaging-court-ruling-goes-public