The US Congress has passed a 45-day extension of a law that grants US intelligence agencies warrantless spying powers.
Bitter infighting over section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in the Republican wing of Congress has repeatedly tanked conservative leaders’ plans to renew the controversial surveillance law for multiple years. The deadlock continued on Thursday, as the Republican House speaker Mike Johnson refused to include key reforms pushed by hardliners in his party and progressive Democrats.
In remarks before a final vote in the House, lawmakers opposed to a long-term extension of section 702 again called on Johnson to consider their concerns about how the surveillance program is abused to spy on Americans.
“We’re willing to give you 45 more days for us to negotiate this thing if the Speaker will actually sit down with us,” said US congressman Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland, who has rallied against an extension of the program with no changes. “We can make this happen if we’re willing to get rid of all the chaos and the pandemonium we’ve seen over the last several days and simply sit down and have a meaningful conversation and write the legislation.”
Hardline Republicans across the aisle who took issue with section 702 welcomed Raskin’s remarks as they too expressed their fears about how the program surveils Americans’ communications. “Fisa databases have been used to query political activists, members of Congress and their staff, random romantic interests of FBI agents, and we’re being told, ‘Oh, don’t worry, it’s not being abused any more,” said Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky. Massie tried, unsuccessfully, to block the 45-day extension, noting: “A short-term infringement of the constitution is still an infringement of the constitution.”
The contentious vote marks the second time this month that Congress’s inability to agree on Fisa’s renewal has led to a short-term extension. The law expires without being reauthorized; the most imminent deadline was midnight on Thursday. Section 702 was originally set to lapse on 20 April, but Congress passed a stopgap measure to extend the surveillance program by 10 days after disagreements over an extension with no substantive changes. The decision to punt the issue a few weeks suggests those differences are unlikely to be resolved soon.
Section 702, first enacted in 2008, allows national security agencies to collect and review texts and emails sent to and from foreigners living outside the US, without a warrant. If an American is talking to a non-American target living abroad, their communications can get swept up too. Privacy advocates say that while the law is intended to surveil foreigners outside the US, the federal government uses this loophole to spy without warrants on Americans, an unconstitutional practice. Intelligence agencies say they need these surveillance powers to prevent terror attacks. A warrant requirement to surveil Americans’ communications is the most pressing demand from privacy advocates and lawmakers worried about section 702’s reauthorization. Republican leadership has so far dismissed these concerns.
“It’s important for our government to understand what bad guys are planning to do to our citizens and our nation,” Republican Jim Jordan, chair of the House judiciary committee, said on Thursday. Jordan had previously called for a warrant requirement to prevent abuses but last month he called for a clean extension. Donald Trump has made the same 180-degree turn.
Critics said the bill’s suggested reforms did nothing more than restate existing law and reiterated their calls for a warrant requirement to surveil Americans. “Under this bill, FBI agents can still collect, search and review Americans’ communications without any review from a judge and that’s at the heart of the 14th amendment – that search warrants have to be based on probable cause,” said Raskin said on Thursday.
The US senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon who has championed privacy rights, said he scored a win in negotiations over the surveillance program. Wyden posted on X that he had secured a deal that a long-term extension would not move forward without a secretive court opinion being made public, which he says reveals abuses of Americans’ rights through section 702.
Privacy advocates blamed the inability to pass a long-term Fisa extension on Johnson for refusing to consider a vote on meaningful reform such as a warrant requirement. “Not allowing that circumvents the democratic process, and it does so at the expense of American’s constitutional rights,” said Hannah James, counsel in the Brennan Center’s liberty and national security program. They say that the legislative process was fairer two years ago – the last time Congress reauthorized Fisa.
“This time, for Speaker Johnson, it’s been my way or the highway,” said Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the security and surveillance project at the Center for Democracy and Technology. In 2024, lawmakers voted on an amendment for a warrant requirement but it failed after ending in a dramatic 212-212 tie.
Surveillance under section 702 can still continue through March 2027 even if Congress does not extend the law by then, because it operates through year-long certifications approved by a special federal court that provides judicial oversight of intelligence agencies’ activities. So the pressure on passing a section 702 extension before the congressional deadline is mostly a “scare tactic”, James said. “Members just get uncomfortable with the idea of underlying statutory lapses” but the way the statute is currently written makes it clear that all existing certifications and directives continue to be valid.
Trump has repeatedly urged Republican holdouts on Fisa to fall in line with party leadership. He has said on Truth Social that the surveillance program is crucial to protect the military and Americans at home from foreign terror attacks. Two years ago, though, he told fellow lawmakers to “KILL FISA” after accusing the FBI of misusing the law to spy on his 2016 campaign.
But in a 15 April Truth Social post advocating for renewing section 702 with no changes, the president acknowledged some downsides of doing so, noting: “I am willing to risk the giving up of my Rights and Privileges as a Citizen for our Great Military and Country!”
