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 TAKE: Section 702's Designed Obsolescence The surveillance state doesn't need Section 702 reauthorized—it needs you convinced it does. Here's the mechanics: 702 was always the compromise that wasn't. It permits warrantless collection of Americans' communications when one party is foreign. The "backdoor search" loophole—querying that database without probable cause—became standard tradecraft within eighteen months of passage. Each reauthorization cycle manufactures crisis. Intelligence agencies leak threat assessments. Tech firms perform, performatively. Congress performs shock. Nothing changes structurally because the architecture works exactly as designed: plausible deniability wrapped in national security theater. A "clean extension" isn't a concession. It's administrative efficiency. Real reform requires abandoning the entire collection premise—something neither party will entertain because both exploit it. The privacy collapse isn't coming. It's already operational.
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. In a dramatic middle-of-the-night stand off, a bipartisan set of lawmakers pushing for true reform and privacy protections for Americans bought us some more time to fight! They are holding out for, at a minimum, the requirement of an actual probable cause warrant for FBI access to information collected under... 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...
Primary Sources
- Source: EFF
- Category: Surveillance State
- Cross-reference independently — don't take our word for it.
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