FISA 702 Reform Scorecard

The Vehicles

Six active proposals. Each row is a real piece of legislation or a real procedural path. "Status" is as of Tuesday, June 9, 2026, 01:30 UTC.

1. House three-year extension (H.R. 8035, "FISA Reform and Reauthorization Act of 2026"): passed House 235-191 on April 29, 2026. No warrant requirement. No data-broker fix. CBDC ban rider attached, killed by Senate Majority Leader Thune as a poison pill. Status: politically dead in current form.
2. Senate Intelligence Committee clean extension text: three-year, no reforms, the vehicle that failed the June 5 procedural vote 47-52. Status: politically dead.
3. Wyden-Lee Government Surveillance Reform Act (S. 4082): warrant requirement, data-broker fix, PCLOB restoration, FISA Court transparency, narrow provider definition. Sponsors: Wyden (D-OR), Lee (R-UT), Warren (D-MA), Lummis (R-WY). House companion: Reps. Davidson (R-OH) and Lofgren (D-CA). Status: introduced March 2026. No floor vote in either chamber.
4. SAFE Act (Durbin-Lee): narrower than GSRA, focused on FBI backdoor searches. Status: reintroduced. No floor vote.
5. Short-term extension: the procedural fallback. Two weeks to 45 days. No reforms. Status: most likely outcome.
6. Sunset: statute expires Friday at midnight. FISC certifications keep collection running until approximately March 2027. Status: the default if no deal.
7. Cotton-Grassley Trump executive order (off-vehicle): not legislation. Asks the State Department to "plan for a potential significant gap" and the White House to "draft a new Executive Order to remedy the gap left by the lapse." Status: letter sent Saturday; no public draft of any order.

The Scorecard

Eight reforms privacy and civil-liberties groups are asking for, scored against each vehicle. ✓ = the reform is in the bill. ✗ = the reform is explicitly excluded or the bill is silent (silent = no, because a clean reauth doesn't add new protections). Partial = language is ambiguous or applies to a subset. "N/A" = not applicable.

1. House Three-Year Extension (H.R. 8035)

The House vehicle. Passed 235-191 on April 29, 2026. Authored by House Intelligence Chair Rick Crawford (R-AR) and House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH). Forty-two Democrats crossed over; the 22 Republican no votes came from the Freedom Caucus, which wanted warrant protections and was bought off with the CBDC ban.^[1]

What it does:

• Reauthorizes Section 702 for three years, through 2029.
• Modest transparency measures: requires the Department of Justice to publish aggregate statistics on FBI backdoor searches.
• Restores the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) with confirmed members (partial). The 2025 firings of PCLOB members by the Trump administration are partially reversed but with a grandfather clause.
• Reauthorizes "lone wolf" authority and the national-security letter sunset extensions.

What it does not do:

• No warrant requirement for FBI backdoor searches.
• No closure of the data-broker loophole.
• No narrowing of the 2024 RISAA "provider" definition.
• No FISA Court transparency beyond the existing statutory scheme.

Political status: passed the House. The Senate will not take it up as written. The June 5 procedural vote (47-52) showed the Senate does not have 60 votes for a clean version. Cotton's expected path: a Senate vehicle that mirrors the House text, with the same three-year term and no reforms. That path also does not have 60 votes.

2. Senate Intelligence Committee Clean Extension

The vehicle Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), chair of Senate Intelligence, has been pushing since March. Three-year term, no reforms. The procedural vote on June 5, 2026 failed 47-52. Seven Republicans defected on civil-liberties grounds, every Democrat except Fetterman voted no, and Mark Warner, the most likely Democratic yes, switched to no Friday night.^[2]

What it does:

• Reauthorizes Section 702 for three years, through 2029.
• Reauthorizes lone-wolf authority and NSL sunset extensions.
• No reforms. The bill text is a re-up, not a rewrite.

What it does not do: nothing. The vote was procedural (motion to invoke cloture, requires 60). It got 47. The seven Republican no votes (Mike Lee, Rand Paul, Josh Hawley, John Kennedy, Eric Schmitt, Rick Scott, Tommy Tuberville) are not coming back. The Cotton path is dead unless a new vehicle is written.

Political status: the procedural defeat was the first time a 702 reauthorization had to clear a public bipartisan revolt in either chamber. The bill is the political anchor for the Cotton "clean reauth" position. The actual bill text has not been released publicly in full: only summaries and floor-statement excerpts have been published.

3. Wyden-Lee Government Surveillance Reform Act (GSRA)

The reform vehicle. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT). Introduced early March 2026. The only bill with both a warrant requirement and a data-broker fix.^[3]

What it does:

• Warrant requirement for FBI backdoor searches. The FBI must obtain a court order based on probable cause before querying Section 702-acquired data for information about a U.S. person.
• Closes the data-broker loophole. Agencies cannot acquire commercially available information about U.S. persons without the same court order that would be required to compel the same information directly from a service provider. Derivative AI models trained on broker-acquired data must be retrained or destroyed.
• Restores PCLOB with confirmed members, bans politically motivated firings, requires timely audits of agency query practices.
• Forces FISA Court transparency. Publishes redacted opinions, allows court-appointed advocates to appeal controversial rulings.
• Narrows the 2024 RISAA "provider" definition so the compelled-assistance authority cannot be expanded to landlords, data-center operators, and other unintended parties.
• Reauthorizes 702 for four years (to 2030), longer than Cotton's three-year ask, in exchange for the reforms.

Political status: introduced. No floor vote. No companion House bill. 76% public support for the warrant amendment, 76% for the data-broker fix. No Republican co-sponsors beyond Lee. The math for 60 votes is brutal: the seven Republican no votes on the clean extension would vote yes on GSRA, but the GSRA loses centrist Democrats who would rather have a clean reauthorization than no reauthorization at all.

4. SAFE Act (Durbin-Lee)

The narrower reform vehicle. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), ranking member of Senate Judiciary, and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT).^[4]

What it does:

• Warrant requirement for FBI backdoor searches of 702 data on U.S. persons: narrow version, applies to the FBI only (not NSA, CIA, NCTC).
• Court-appointed amicus in FISA Court proceedings involving novel interpretations of 702.
• Reauthorizes 702 for two years (to 2028).

What it does not do:

• No data-broker fix.
• No PCLOB restoration.
• No provider-definition narrowing.
• No FISA Court opinion publication.

Political status: reintroduced. No floor vote. The narrower scope makes it politically easier to pass than GSRA, but the data-broker omission makes it unacceptable to the 17 AGs and the 133-coalition. Position: useful as a fallback if GSRA cannot get to 60, but not the preferred vehicle.

5. Short-Term Extension

The procedural fallback. Two weeks to 45 days. No reforms. Reauthorizes 702 with the same authorities, the same lack of warrant requirement, the same data-broker loophole. Buys Congress time to negotiate a longer vehicle.

What it does:

• Reauthorizes 702 for two weeks to 45 days, depending on the version.
• Keeps the lights on. No reforms. No new protections. No new restrictions.

What it does not do: anything else. The whole point is to defer.

Political status: the most likely outcome by Friday. The procedural path is well-worn: Congress passed a 45-day extension on April 30 with a 2 a.m. vote. The seven Republican defectors will not vote for a short-term clean extension either, so the math is the same as the procedural vote. A short-term extension needs 60 votes. A short-term extension that includes warrant language and a data-broker fix would be the path to a deal. No such text has been released.

6. Sunset

The default if no deal. Statute expires Friday, June 12, 2026, at midnight. Section 702 is technically dead.

What it does:

• Removes the statutory authority for 702 collection.

What it does not do: actually stop collection. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court's annual certifications, scheduled for renewal in March 2026, remain valid until their expiration date, approximately March 2027.^[5] The NSA can keep collecting on existing targets. The FBI can keep querying. The surveillance apparatus keeps running for another nine months on bureaucratic autopilot.

What changes: no new collection targets. No new provider directives. Companies already under directive will likely continue, but with serious provider-liability uncertainty. As the year progresses and existing certifications expire, intelligence capability degrades.

Political status: the politically toxic outcome. Both parties will spend the next 48 hours trying to avoid it. The deadline is the only pressure point the public has ever had on this program, and the pressure is being wasted on extensions.

7. The Cotton-Grassley Trump Executive Order (Off-Vehicle)

Not legislation. The Saturday letter from Senate Intelligence Chair Cotton and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, obtained by CBS News, asks the State Department to "plan for a potential significant gap in foreign intelligence collection" and the White House to "draft a new Executive Order to remedy the gap left by the lapse."^[2]

What it could do:

• Reprioritize, redirect, or expand collection under other authorities: Executive Order 12333 (foreign collection), FISA Title I (individual warrants), National Security Letters (administrative subpoenas for metadata).

What it cannot do: create new statutory collection power. The 702 authority is statutory. An EO cannot reauthorize a statute the President does not have constitutional authority to write.

Political status: positioning, not action. The legal fight that follows a Cotton-Grassley-style EO would be fast: the ACLU and EFF would be in court within hours of an order being signed. The likely scenario, per the language in the letter, is that the order is a fallback if the statute lapses Friday. As of Tuesday morning, no draft has been made public.

Who Supports What

Not the bill text. The political position. As of Tuesday, June 9, 2026.

• House three-year ext. (Crawford/Jordan): House GOP leadership, House Intelligence Committee Republicans, the National Security Council, ODNI.
• Senate Intel clean ext. (Cotton): Senate Intelligence Committee Republicans, ODNI, NSA, FBI, CIA, NCTC, the Trump White House, the House three-year-ext. caucus.
• Wyden-Lee GSRA: 76% of the public (per multiple 2025–2026 polls), 17 state attorneys general, 133 civil-society organizations, the House Progressive Caucus, the House Freedom Caucus (informally), the Senate privacy wing (Lee, Paul, Hawley, sometimes Welch, Slotkin).
• SAFE Act (Durbin-Lee): Durbin, Lee, the Brennan Center, EFF, Demand Progress, EPIC. Narrower support than GSRA but the same coalition minus the data-broker-fighters.
• Short-term ext.: Everyone who wants more time. The political beneficiary of a short-term extension is the leadership in both chambers. The political loser is the public, which loses the only pressure point the deadline created.
• Sunset: The 17 AGs and 133-coalition as a policy preference. No member of Congress has called for sunset as a first choice. The most aligned lawmakers (Lee, Paul, Hawley) have framed it as a fallback.
• Trump EO: Cotton, Grassley, the intelligence community. Opposed by every civil-liberties group that has filed on the issue.

What the Math Says

The procedural vote on June 5 was a 60-vote threshold. It got 47. The seven Republican defectors (Lee, Paul, Hawley, Kennedy, Schmitt, Scott, Tuberville) will not be there for a clean extension. The 45–46 Democrats are not enough to compensate. The Trump administration's Pulte appointment removed Warner as a likely Democratic yes vote. Cotton has the votes to block GSRA from his own caucus.

The deal that has any chance needs:

• Warrant amendment (Wyden-Lee / SAFE Act language).
• Data-broker fix (Wyden-Lee language, GSRA only).
• A sunset long enough that Cotton can claim a win (three or four years, not two).
• A short-term extension to bridge the deadline while the longer vehicle is drafted.

None of this is in the current House vehicle. None of it is in the Senate Intelligence text. None of it has 60 votes on its own. The Cotton-Grassley letter is the tell: the executive branch is not waiting for a legislative deal, it is preparing for the statute to lapse and improvising afterward. The deadline will pass. The surveillance will continue on FISC autopilot. The political urgency will dissipate. The loophole will stay open.

That is the default. The active proposals are what is on the table. The math is what is on the floor.

References

1. The Hill: House GOP pushes FISA spy powers vote to April amid opposition (March 2026)
2. Roll Call: FISA reauthorization stalls in early-morning Senate vote (June 5, 2026)
3. Sen. Wyden: Wyden, Lee Introduce Government Surveillance Reform Act (March 2026)
4. Senate Judiciary Committee: Durbin, Lee Introduce Bipartisan SAFE Act (2026)
5. Wiley: Congress Again Approaches Deadline for Extending FISA 702 Authorities (May 2026)
6. CBS News: Senate fails to extend FISA surveillance program as deadline nears (June 5–6, 2026)
7. EFF: Congress Must Reject New Insufficient 702 Reauthorization Bill (April 2026)