Congress keeps kicking surveillance reform down the road

Congress has reauthorized Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — but only for another 45 days. The extension is meant to give legislators more time to negotiate reforms to the controversial wiretapping bill. If the past few weeks are any indication of how future debates will go, however, we’re in for a bumpy ride.

The House renewed Section 702 with minor reforms on Wednesday evening. The bill didn’t include the hotly debated warrant requirement, but it did feature a provision prohibiting the Federal Reserve from issuing Central Bank Digital Currencies, which Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) described as a nonstarter.

“Three weeks is more than enough time to negotiate a reform bill,” Thune said on the Senate floor on Thursday. “That is, if members are serious about negotiating.”

That’s the open question. Senators tussled over the length of the extension. Ron Wyden (D-OR) favored a three-week reauthorization, while Tom Cotton (R-AR) called for a 45-day extension, citing an upcoming one-week recess. Section 702, Cotton said, was essential to US Armed Forces’ raid on Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. The Senate ultimately landed on a 45-day extension, which the House upheld Thursday afternoon in a 261-111 vote.

Negotiations over FISA’s future are likely to be fraught. On Wednesday, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) castigated House leadership for not allowing members to debate or vote on amendments to the reauthorization bill and described the past two days of negotiations as “a dumpster fire from a process standpoint.”

“We spent all night waiting around while Republicans fought among themselves,” McGovern said. “We were told nearly at midnight on Monday to go home. We were then told rules would meet at 8AM on Tuesday. We showed up for that meeting only to be told there would be no meeting because Republicans were still busy fighting with each other.”

McGovern pointed out that many of the amendments reforming FISA were in fact introduced by Republicans — but House leadership wouldn’t allow them to be debated.

“These bills are take it or leave it. The leadership dictates every letter, every comma,” he said. “This is no way to run this place. It is no way to run a banana stand. It is pathetic, it is a disgrace, and the Speaker and the Majority ought to be embarrassed by what is going on here. You’re screwing over your own members.”

Some members suggested that the House bill didn’t need to be debated because it already included several reforms. “It ain’t the same FISA,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who in 2024 supported an amendment requiring federal authorities to obtain warrants for queries involving US persons.

The bill the House passed Wednesday did include some reforms. As described by Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR), it would establish criminal penalties for intentional abuse of FISA 702 queries and falsification of statements to the FISA court, require the Department of Justice to update procedures to allow members to attend the court hearings, require FBI attorneys’ preapproval of all FBI US person queries, and mandate an independent audit on Section 702 procedures by the Government Accountability Office. The bill also included an entirely unrelated provision blocking the Federal Reserve from issuing Central Bank Digital Currencies. This provision, based on Majority Whip Tom Emmer’s (R-MN) Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act, was attached to the FISA reauthorization by Rep. French Hill (R-AR).

Privacy advocates disagree that the House bill goes far enough. Jake Laperruque, the deputy director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, described it as “incredibly disappointing.”

“This bill is empty-calories through and through. It contains no warrant for querying Americans’ messages, and no meaningful reforms of any kind,” Laperruque said.

Congress now has until June 14th, 2026 to figure out reforms to Section 702.