World
A Surveillance Ruling Stayed Sealed While Congress Voted
The FBI, NSA, CIA, and National Counterterrorism Center each told the court their filtering problems were fixed in early 2025. A classified March 17 ruling found they were not, and Congress renewed the program for 45 days in exchange for a letter requesting the executive branch do what the statute already required.
On March 17, 2026, a judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court renewed the government's Section 702 collection procedures for another year and found that filter tools used to sort through raw 702 collections were still routing foreign-target searches through Americans' stored data without the procedural review the statute requires. The New York Times, reporting on the classified ruling, described the filtering problem as extending across the intelligence community, naming the FBI, NSA, CIA, and National Counterterrorism Center. Each had represented to the court that the problem was resolved in early 2025.
Section 702 authorizes warrantless NSA collection of foreign-target communications passing through American networks. Searching that collected data by U.S.-person identifiers is permitted under the statute, but only with procedural safeguards: a documented purpose, supervisor sign-off, a record kept for oversight review. In August 2024, DOJ overseers discovered the FBI running what it called an "Advanced Filter Function," which let agents retrieve Americans' communications as a byproduct of foreign-target searches without triggering any of those steps. The bureau had not tracked how many times it used the tool; DOJ had not audited it. The FBI discontinued the original function during 2025, but the March 17 opinion found the bureau operating a replacement with the same functional effect.
The March 17 ruling required the administration to correct those issues by April 16. The administration said it was "working expeditiously to understand the mission impact of the court's order." The opinion stayed classified.
With the compliance deadline two weeks past and the opinion still sealed, both chambers voted on April 30. The House passed the measure 261-111; the Senate approved it unanimously, sending it to President Trump for a 45-day extension through mid-June.
Senator Ron Wyden, a Senate Intelligence Committee member who had reviewed the classified text, called the opinion evidence of "serious violations of Americans' constitutional rights" and blocked the extension until Committee Chairman Tom Cotton and ranking Democrat Mark Warner agreed to send a letter to DNI Tulsi Gabbard and the Department of Justice requesting declassification within 15 days. Cotton responded from the Senate floor that Wyden had "a long-standing practice of distorting highly classified material in public" and warned that "one of these days there are going to be some consequences" while he held the gavel. The letter added a deadline to an obligation that already exists in statute: the law instructs the attorney general and the director of national intelligence to publish significant FISC opinions when possible, with redactions as needed. What Wyden extracted was a named date, not a new duty.
The ODNI's 13th Annual Statistical Transparency Report, released April 1, recorded 7,413 FBI queries of U.S. persons under Section 702 for 2025, up from 5,518 in 2024. Neither figure accounts for filter function queries, which went untracked. The 15-day declassification deadline falls around May 15, before Congress returns from recess. The administration that missed the court's April 16 remediation order now holds that clock, set by the same senators who just extended its authority.