Johnson Unveils 3-Year FISA 702 Plan as April 30 Deadline Looms

Speaker Mike Johnson is doubling down on an effort to renew one of the most sweeping U.S. surveillance authorities despite two recent congressional rebukes and mounting evidence of abuse against American citizens. On Thursday the Louisiana Republican unveiled a proposal that would extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for several more years with only cosmetic changes from earlier versions that failed this month. The program is scheduled to expire April 30, leaving lawmakers scrambling.

Section 702, enacted in 2008, permits the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies to vacuum up the emails, text messages and phone calls of hundreds of thousands of foreign targets overseas. The government acknowledges that a significant portion of that data includes communications with or about U.S. citizens. Once collected, federal law enforcement can search that trove without obtaining a warrant, a practice privacy advocates across the political spectrum have condemned for years as a blatant end-run around the Fourth Amendment.

A 2023 report from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent executive-branch watchdog, laid out the scale of the problem. The board documented “significant privacy and civil liberties risks” from both individual and “batch” queries of Americans’ data. It warned that collection often occurs “upstream,” meaning the government intercepts communications before they even reach their intended recipient if the data passes through certain internet infrastructure. The practical result is a digital dragnet that scoops up innocent Americans’ private conversations by the millions.

Civil libertarians hoped this moment might finally produce meaningful reform. For nearly two decades lawmakers from both parties have pushed to require warrants before the FBI or other agencies can deliberately search for an American’s information in the 702 database. That modest protection, they argue, would prevent the kind of documented abuses that have eroded public trust. Those abuses include FBI agents querying the names of journalists, members of Congress, Black Lives Matter activists and even people who simply attended protests. The government’s own audits have repeatedly found thousands of improper searches, including ones conducted for personal reasons or to vet potential sources.

Yet Johnson’s new plan, according to those familiar with the discussions, makes no meaningful concession to these concerns. It largely mirrors the bill that collapsed in a series of overnight votes earlier in April when a coalition of progressive Democrats and libertarian-minded Republicans refused to support reauthorization without a warrant requirement. The speaker’s persistence signals that the intelligence community and its allies in both parties still hold the upper hand, even as Republican control of the House, Senate and White House had seemed to make renewal a foregone conclusion.

President Trump’s own reversal on the issue has been particularly jarring for reformers. During his first term and on the campaign trail, Trump frequently railed against the surveillance state, accusing intelligence agencies of spying on his campaign. His administration nevertheless embraced Section 702, and Trump officials are now arguing, as previous administrations did, that a warrant requirement would impose an unbearable burden on national security operations. Critics see this as the predictable triumph of institutional inertia over principle.

The fight has exposed fractures within the GOP. Some conservative members, influenced by former Rep. Justin Amash and a new generation of libertarian voices, have joined Democrats like Reps. Zoe Lofgren and Warren Davidson in demanding basic constitutional guardrails. Their argument is straightforward: if the government wants to read an American’s emails, it should have to convince a judge there is probable cause. National security hawks counter that the program has produced vital intelligence on terrorism, cyberattacks and foreign espionage. They point to declassified examples while glossing over the routine over-collection of domestic communications.

The temporary extension passed earlier this year bought lawmakers until the end of the month, but the clock is now ticking loudly. If Johnson cannot find the votes, Congress may be forced into either a short-term patch or, optimistically, a more serious negotiation that includes warrant protections. Privacy advocates say this is the best chance in years to curb a program that has quietly transformed into a domestic surveillance tool.

The broader context is troubling. Section 702 operates in near-total secrecy. The public learns of its scale and misuse only through periodic government reports, inspector general audits and occasional whistleblowers. Each renewal cycle brings the same ritual: dire warnings from the intelligence community that any reform will blind America to threats, followed by the quiet admission years later that abuses occurred anyway. Civil liberties groups from the ACLU to the Brennan Center have documented how the absence of a warrant has enabled mission creep, turning a foreign intelligence program into a convenient domestic search engine.

Johnson’s latest proposal does include some minor tweaks on oversight and reporting requirements, but these fall far short of the structural change advocates say is necessary. Without a warrant rule, FBI agents will continue to be able to type an American’s name into the 702 database on a whim, something the government itself concedes has happened thousands of times with little accountability.

As the April 30 deadline approaches, the question facing Congress is whether it will once again rubber-stamp an authority that treats every American’s private communications as fair game or whether it will finally impose the judicial oversight the Constitution demands. The speaker’s decision to press forward with a flawed bill suggests the surveillance state retains its powerful friends. For those Americans whose data sits in government repositories without their knowledge or consent, the promise of reform appears to be slipping away once more.