Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act expires on April 20 — six days from today — and the House plans to vote this week on H.R. 8035, an 18-month clean extension that carries no new privacy reforms. [1]

The bill would reauthorize the government's authority to conduct warrantless surveillance of foreign targets' communications, including those that sweep up Americans' data incidentally. The extension is "clean" in the specific sense that it contains none of the warrant requirements, query reforms, or data minimization provisions that civil liberties groups and a bipartisan coalition of legislators have demanded since the program's abuses became public. [2]

The timing is awkward. The FISA Court — the secret body that oversees the program — issued a classified ruling in March that found ongoing compliance problems with how intelligence agencies query the database for information about Americans. [3] The New York Times reported that the court objected to CIA, FBI, and NSA filtering systems that effectively queried for Americans' information outside the usual rules. [3] The court recertified the program anyway, meaning it can continue operating into 2027 even if Congress lets the statute lapse. [3]

That recertification undermines the urgency argument the administration is making for the vote. If the program survives regardless, Congress is voting not to keep surveillance running but to keep it running without reforms — a distinction the White House prefers to blur. Trump posted on Truth Social that the program "catches the terrorists," citing the foiled 2024 Taylor Swift concert attack as evidence. [3] Privacy advocates note that the same program was used to query the communications of a sitting member of Congress, a fact the administration has not addressed.

Rep. Warren Davidson's Government Surveillance Reform Act, introduced in March, would require a warrant for queries targeting Americans. [2] It has bipartisan support and no floor vote scheduled.

-- SAMUEL CRANE, Washington