A key tool of the U.S. intelligence community will expire this month unless Congress acts. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA 702) allows agencies to collect and review electronic communications of noncitizens outside the United States without individualized court orders. The government says intelligence from 702 underpins a majority of items in the president’s daily briefing and is vital for counterterrorism, counterintelligence, cybersecurity and disrupting trafficking.
But lawmakers from both parties argue the program enables warrantless surveillance of Americans when foreigners communicate with people in the U.S., raising Fourth Amendment and privacy concerns. The debate over renewing and reforming 702 has long been recurring: the statute’s authorization is routinely given an expiration so Congress must vote to renew it. The program’s 2024 authorization was set to expire April 20.
What Section 702 does and how collection works
Under Section 702, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) issues a broad annual authorization permitting collection against categories of foreign targets proposed by the attorney general and the director of national intelligence. The NSA, CIA, National Counterterrorism Center and FBI obtain communications from U.S. companies that facilitate email, social media and phone service; the NSA also collects communications as they traverse internet backbone networks with compelled assistance from network operators.
Because foreign targets sometimes communicate with people in the United States, the program results in incidental collection of Americans’ communications. The government and intelligence community stress the program’s value: officials cite uses including disruption of terrorist plots, tracing origins of fentanyl precursors, responding to ransomware, identifying hacking intrusions, and disrupting kidnappings, assassinations and espionage.
Scope and significance
Section 702 gathers huge volumes of material: there were 349,823 declared surveillance targets in 2025, up from about 246,000 in 2022. Targets can generate many records, producing a large searchable corpus. In 2023, 60% of items in the president’s daily brief contained Section 702 information, and the ODNI reported that 70% of the CIA’s illicit synthetic drug disruptions that year relied on 702 data.
Queries for U.S. persons and the debate over warrants
Federal agencies can query the corpus for information about Americans under policies and procedures that have evolved since the program began. The ODNI has described legitimate reasons for U.S.-person queries, including locating a U.S. hostage through communications with a foreign captor, identifying the scope of a cyberattack against a U.S. victim, detecting foreign espionage networks involving a government employee, or identifying threats against a U.S. official traveling overseas.
But the government does not currently need a targeted court order to run many of these queries. Intelligence and FBI officials say imposing a warrant requirement for queries would hinder timely responses to threats and would be overly burdensome. Former FBI Director Christopher Wray testified that a warrant requirement would, in practice, amount to a ban on many urgent queries because of the time and resources needed to win court approval.
Civil liberties concerns and documented abuses
Privacy advocates and some lawmakers argue that the program permits what they call “backdoor” searches of Americans’ communications without proper judicial oversight, undermining Fourth Amendment protections. Critics include Sen. Mike Lee (R‑Utah), Sen. Ron Wyden (D‑Ore.), Rep. Warren Davidson (R‑Ohio) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D‑Md.), among others.
There have been documented abuses and compliance problems. In 2022, the FISC described the FBI’s violations as “persistent and widespread.” Transparency and oversight reports have disclosed warrantless searches involving a U.S. senator, journalists and commentators, 6,800 Social Security numbers, 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign, and cases involving FBI personnel and acquaintances. Demand Progress and other groups have compiled timelines of such incidents identified by the court and by agency disclosures.
Existing safeguards and limits
Federal rules impose safeguards: FBI agents receive annual FISA training; searches aimed solely at general criminal investigations (rather than foreign intelligence) are generally prohibited; many queries require supervisory or attorney approval; higher-level approvals are required for searches involving political or media figures; and information from 702 queries typically cannot be used to launch criminal investigations without a court order except in limited serious-offense categories (national security, death, kidnapping, serious bodily injury, etc.).
Agency disclosures show the number of U.S.-person queries has fallen markedly in recent years, from 119,383 queries in the December 2021–November 2022 window to 7,413 in the comparable 2024–2025 period.
Politics and the renewal fight
The reauthorization fight often crosses party lines. Some legislators who previously supported renewal have shifted positions amid new political dynamics and reform efforts. President Trump supported a clean 18‑month extension in the most recent debate, marking a change from earlier public opposition. Advocates for keeping the program largely as is warn that curtailing query authority or imposing new warrant requirements could impede critical investigations and threat responses.
Opponents of the current regime press for reforms to require more judicial review, stricter limits on queries of Americans, improved auditing and stronger penalties for misuse. Supporters counter that the program’s intelligence value—documented in disruption of plots, drug interdiction, cybersecurity responses and other national-security missions—would be jeopardized by burdensome new requirements.
The impending deadline ensures a bruising congressional fight between civil-liberties advocates seeking tighter checks and national-security proponents urging continuity and flexibility. How Congress balances those priorities will determine whether Section 702 is renewed as written, modified, or allowed to lapse.