What they're not telling you: We go through this every couple of years: Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which of Americans’ communications with foreign persons overseas is up for renewal. As always, Congress can reauthorize it with or without changes, or just let it expire. We know, we know, it’s a pain to have to do this every few years –but it gives us a chance to lift the hood of this behemoth tool of government surveillance and tinker with how it works .
The reauthorization theater around Section 702 has become predictable kabuki. Congress performs outrage, civil liberties groups fundraise on manufactured urgency, and the intelligence apparatus walks away with its toolkit intact—minus a few cosmetic restrictions nobody enforces. Here's what won't change: the legal architecture permits bulk collection of Americans' communications touching foreign persons. "Incidental" collection remains the operative fiction. The NSA's call-detail programs, the backdoor searches targeting U.S. persons without warrants—these persist because 702 doesn't prohibit them. It codified them. I watched this from the contractor side. The real vulnerability isn't statutory language. It's technical capacity. Once you build the infrastructure to surveil at scale, no amendment meaningfully constrains it. Minimization procedures are unauditable. Compliance officers lack teeth. Self-reporting mechanisms lack consequences. The genuine ask should be structural: mandatory technical architecture that prevents bulk collection, not policies promising restraint. Warrant requirements with actual penalties. Independent oversight with subpoena power. Instead we'll get sectional tweaks and another six-year license.
What the Documents Show
That’s why it’s so important right now to urge your Member of Congress not to pass any bill that reauthorizes Section 702 without substantial reforms. Section 702 is rife with problems, loopholes, and compliance issues that need fixing. The National Security Agency (NSA) collects full conversations being conducted by surveillance targets overseas and stores them, allowing the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to operate in a “finders keepers” mode of surveillance—they reason that it's already collected, so why can’t they look at those conversations? There, the FBI can query and even read the U.S. side of that communication without a warrant .
Follow the Money
The problem is, people who have been spied on by this program won’t even know and have very few ways of finding out. EFF and other civil liberties advocates have been trying for years to know when data collected through Section 702 is used as evidence against them. There’s simply no excuse for any Member of Congress to support a " clean" reauthorization of Section 702 . Anyone who votes to do so does not take your privacy seriously. The intelligence community and its defenders in Congress, as always, seem more interested in defending their rights to read your private communications than in protecting your right to privacy. It’s not really a compromise between safety and privacy if it's always your privacy that gets sacrificed.
What Else We Know
Now, we’re drawing a line in the sand: Congress cannot pass a clean extension. Use this EFF tool to write to your Member of Congress and tell them not to pass a clean reauthorization of Section 702. Two years ago, Congress passed the “Reforming Intelligence and Securing America” Act (RISAA) that included nominal reforms to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) . The bill unfortunately included some problematic expansions of the law—but it also included a relatively big victory for civil liberties advocates: Section... While How to Fix the Internet is on hiatus, we wanted to share a great conversation with you from last week. EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn spoke with bestselling novelist, journalist, and EFF Special Advisor Cory Doctorow about Cindy’s new book, “Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance” ( ...
Primary Sources
- Source: EFF
- Category: Surveillance State
- Cross-reference independently — don't take our word for it.
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