FISA 702: 9 Days Left

40 Former Spy Chiefs Want You to Trust Them

On April 8, roughly 40 former national security officials published a letter to Congress urging an immediate clean renewal of Section 702. The signatories include former FBI Director Chris Wray, former CIA Director John Brennan, former DNI James Clapper, and former NSA Deputy Director George Barnes [1].

Their pitch: “We cannot afford to let our Intelligence Community lose this tool that keeps our nation safe, even for a day.”

The letter specifically tells Congress to keep the data broker loophole fight separate from 702 reauthorization. Translation: don’t attach the reforms that privacy advocates have spent two years demanding. Just renew the warrantless spying powers with no strings attached.

These are the same officials who oversaw years of documented 702 abuses: the surveillance of protesters, journalists, lawmakers, donors, and a federal judge. The same ones who ran the programs that required FISC to issue repeated warnings about noncompliance. They’re asking for trust. Their track record says otherwise.

The Court Is Hedging Its Bets

On March 17, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court renewed the procedures governing how agencies collect, handle, and search data under Section 702, for another year [2].

That matters because the underlying statute expires April 20, but FISC-approved surveillance orders can run up to a year past the sunset. The judge is creating a safety net: even if Congress lets 702 lapse, existing collection doesn’t stop overnight. It winds down gradually.

But the judge didn’t just rubber-stamp things. The FISC flagged problems with the “filtering tools” that the FBI, NSA, and other agencies use to narrow searches. The court found that these tools effectively turn foreign-target searches into U.S.-person queries: exactly the kind of backdoor search that reformers want to require a warrant for [2].

The court ordered agencies to “reengineer filter tools” to fix the deficiencies. The White House has until April 16 to appeal or correct the problems. That’s four days before the statute expires. The timing is not a coincidence.

FBI Searches of Americans: Up 35%

Here’s what the intelligence community doesn’t want you thinking about while they push for renewal.

An FBI letter to Congress dated March 11 revealed that FBI searches of U.S. person data collected under Section 702 rose from 5,518 in December 2024 to 7,413 in November 2025, a 35% increase [3]. The agency conducting the most domestic searches is the one whose reforms were supposed to curb exactly this behavior.

It gets worse. In 2024, 38% of FBI queries actually returned 702-acquired information. In 2025, that number dropped to 28% [3]. More searches. Fewer results. The FBI is casting a wider net and catching less. That pattern doesn’t scream “targeted intelligence collection.” It screams fishing expedition.

Remember when the intelligence community told Congress that the 2024 RISAA reforms fixed the compliance problems? The FISC’s own April 9 findings say the problems DOJ claimed to have fixed in early 2025 are “in fact ongoing” [2]. The filtering issues are “across the intelligence community,” not isolated to one agency.

The Himes Problem

House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Jim Himes (D-CT) told constituents he supports a clean extension and would vote against reform amendments. He invited the public to fact-check his claims [4].

They did. The American Prospect documented two key misleading statements:

• “There’s no data acquired under FISA 702 authorities that is commercial data.” False. The NSA buys Americans’ commercial data from private companies without warrants. This is documented and undisputed [4].
• “[AI] has absolutely nothing to do with 702.” Also false. The DOJ National Security Division has “worked closely” with the intelligence community “to discuss new AI tools that are involved in processing or analyzing FISA-acquired information” [4].

Privacy advocates ambushed Himes at an April 2 event over his support for a clean extension [5]. The top Democrat on the intelligence committee is carrying water for the surveillance state and getting caught lying about it. If Johnson needs Democratic votes to pass a clean extension, Himes is the broker. That should worry everyone.

The Vote Math: Still Broken

Nothing has changed since our 19-day countdown. The arithmetic is still ugly:

• 98 Progressive Caucus Democrats formally pledged to vote no without reforms [6]
• 12+ Freedom Caucus Republicans demanding warrant requirements and data broker restrictions
• Jim Jordan flipped to supporting a clean extension, but lost credibility with the holdouts
• Jim Himes signaling he’ll bring some Democrats along for a clean vote

Johnson needs 218. The clean extension doesn’t have them. The question is whether enough moderate Democrats break from the Progressive Caucus pledge to replace the Republican defectors. The Intercept reported in March that Democrats might effectively “save Mike Johnson’s push to give Trump domestic spying power” [7].

The SAVE Act complication hasn’t gone away either. Republicans linked FISA reauthorization to their voter suppression bill. That creates accidental leverage for reform: if Democrats are needed, they can demand privacy protections as the price [8].

9 Days: Three Scenarios

The vote is expected the week of April 14. Here’s how it plays out:

1. Clean extension passes with bipartisan vote: Himes delivers enough Democrats. Reformers lose. 702 gets 18 months with zero changes. The FBI keeps searching Americans’ data without warrants, and the 35% increase becomes the new baseline. This is the intelligence community’s preferred outcome
2. Reforms get attached: Johnson can’t get Democratic help without concessions. Some version of warrant requirements or data broker restrictions gets bundled in. This is the best-case scenario for privacy but requires Johnson to accept reforms the White House explicitly opposes
3. 702 lapses: Nobody gets to 218. The authority sunsets April 20. Existing FISC orders stay active up to a year: the court’s March 17 renewal means current collection continues. But no new orders can be issued. Intelligence officials call this “a self-inflicted national security calamity.” Reformers call it the only leverage that has ever worked

A temporary lapse happened before: in April 2024, Section 702 expired for 10 hours before the Senate passed RISAA at 5 AM. Nobody died. The intelligence community kept collecting under existing orders. The sky didn’t fall.

What You Can Do This Week

• Call your House rep now: 5calls.org makes it a two-minute call. Tell them: no reauthorization without a warrant requirement for U.S. person queries and a data broker purchase ban
• Check if your rep signed the clean extension: If they’re a Progressive Caucus member, hold them to their pledge. If they’re not, ask them why they’re voting to let the FBI search your data without a warrant when searches just went up 35%
• Join EPIC’s campaign: The Reform or Sunset campaign has action tools, fact sheets, and talking points
• Share the FBI numbers: 7,413 searches of Americans in 2025. Only 28% returned results. These aren’t targeted intelligence operations. These are digital fishing trips

References

1. Nextgov: Former National Security Officials Urge Congress to Renew Section 702 Before Expiration (April 2026)
2. Nextgov: Judge Renews Procedures for 702 Surveillance Program That Could Soon Lapse (April 2026)
3. Nextgov: FBI Queries of Americans’ Data Under FISA 702 Rose 35% in 2025 (March 2026)
4. The American Prospect: Himes Fact-Checked on ‘Misleading’ Claims About Warrantless Spying (April 2026)
5. The American Prospect: Privacy Advocates Ambush Himes Over Clean FISA Push (April 2026)
6. State of Surveillance: 98 House Democrats Just Made Section 702’s Future More Uncertain (March 2026)
7. The Intercept: Democrats Might Save Johnson’s Push to Give Trump Domestic Spying Power (March 2026)
8. The American Prospect: Warrantless Spying Reform Just Got a Whole Lot More Interesting (March 2026)

Related Coverage

• FISA 702: 19 Days Left (Johnson delays the vote, reform coalition grows)
• The SAFE Act Is Back (The bipartisan reform bill that would require warrants for American queries)
• 98 House Democrats vs. Warrantless Surveillance (The CPC pledge that changed the math)
• FBI Can’t Protect Its Own Surveillance Data (China hacked FBI wiretap systems and it was classified a major incident)
• ODNI 13th Transparency Report (Section 702 targets climbing, FBI queries up 35%)
• The Data Broker Loophole Explained (How the government buys your data without a warrant)
• FISA 702: The Warrant Fight (The 212-212 vote that almost changed everything)
• FISA 702: T-8 Days (SAVE Act collision, Luna amendment, and why the math still doesn’t work)