Warrant debate continues to hang over FISA renewal

Allison Mollenkamp, CQ-Roll Call on Oct 26, 2026

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WASHINGTON — Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle threw fresh uncertainty into the debate over renewing warrantless surveillance authority on Monday.

Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., said the program known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act needs a warrant requirement, while Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Adam B. Schiff, D-Calif., called for the release of a court opinion they said detailed “abuses” of the program.

The authority lapsed earlier this year, though intelligence data collection was still possible under authorization by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

The law allowed for collection of communications overseas but has, in the process, swept up some Americans’ data. Privacy and civil liberties concerns have united members of varying political stripes.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Griffith said that there could be “problems” reauthorizing the surveillance program “if they’re not willing to put a warrant requirement in there” for the FBI to search the collected data.

“I think that we can do something reasonable, but we need some protections for American civil liberties that are not, in my opinion, currently in there,” Griffith said. “I know there’s big disagreement with some of my colleagues, but I think there needs to be a warrant.”

In June, Griffith voted in favor of a short-term extension of the program, though the bill fell well short, 198-218, under expedited consideration that required a two-thirds majority vote for passage.

Also on Monday, Wyden and Schiff sent a letter to Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton and Attorney General Todd Blanche to demand the release of a declassified version of a March opinion and order by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The senators said the opinion “details serious abuses of Americans’ rights” and legally should have been released in September.

“Yet this opinion remains hidden over a month later, suggesting that the administration hopes to secure a renewal of Section 702 while keeping Congress and the public in the dark,” Wyden and Schiff wrote.

They tied releasing the opinion to efforts to reauthorize the surveillance program in the lame-duck session.

“As Congress continues to debate the fate of this authority, lawmakers must be able to discuss these abuses openly,” they said. “Otherwise, the American people will rightly question whether a government that so flagrantly violates basic legal requirements, like the statute requiring declassification, can ever be trusted to not abuse a powerful surveillance tool like Section 702.”

The senators said that the order accompanying the opinion authorized surveillance through March of 2027.

They also referenced a previous letter, sent by Senate Intelligence Chairman Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and ranking member Mark Warner, D-Va., prior to the FISA 702 lapse. The letter requested that the Trump administration release the court opinion within 15 days.

In July, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Blanche said the Justice Department would “continue to look at” releasing the opinion and that “we need 702 reauthorized.”

Wyden sits on the Intelligence Committee and Schiff is a former ranking member and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. They called the continued delay “not acceptable, especially as this administration restarts its attempts to lobby Congress to renew Section 702 without reforms.”

Wyden and Schiff highlighted their support for those changes, which the letter said could include requiring a warrant to search 702 data for the communications of particular Americans, “stopping the government from warrantlessly buying Americans’ data from data brokers, and limiting the people and entities that the government can conscript into surveillance of Americans.”

The letter demanded the release of the court opinion “as soon as possible” and a written response by Nov. 6 providing an explanation for the delay in releasing the opinion and identification of officials who withheld it.

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(Aris Folley contributed to this report.)

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