Congress is heading toward another deadline on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). This time the fight is over a court opinion that lawmakers have read and the public has not. Writing in Just Security on Oct. 29, 2026, Jake Laperruque of the Center for Democracy & Technology argues that the executive branch is withholding a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) ruling that faults how the government searches Section 702 data for information about Americans. He also contends that the delay breaks the government's own disclosure obligations.

A Program Running on Court Approvals

Section 702's statutory authority has been uncertain for most of 2026. Just Security's April 17 Early Edition reported that the House approved a short extension, roughly ten days, while some Republicans and Democrats pressed for votes on new privacy limits. The same roundup said President Trump wanted the law renewed "without any changes." It also reported that the FISC had reauthorized the program for another year in March, which gave it a safety net if Congress let the statute lapse.

That is what happened. In a July 22 Just Security essay, Faiza Patel of the Brennan Center wrote that Section 702 lapsed in June 2026. She tied the lapse to concerns over an intelligence-community nomination and to longstanding disagreement over how much reform the law needs. She added that the program continues to operate under earlier FISC approvals. Laperruque's October piece says FISA 702 "will shut down in March unless lawmakers act," and that the administration is urging Congress to extend it.

The Undisclosed Opinion

According to Laperruque, the New York Times reported in April 2026 on a FISC opinion criticizing the government for using filtering tools to run queries on Americans without logging those activities as queries. He describes the tools as letting personnel narrow broader searches down to specific communicants, including Americans, and he notes that details remain scarce. Separately, the April Early Edition reported that the Justice Department told Congress it was appealing a FISC ruling that barred national security agencies from using certain tools to process Americans' data collected under Section 702. Neither source states whether the two descriptions refer to the same ruling.

Laperruque argues that the logging question goes to the core of the oversight system. A query that is never recorded as a query can escape audits and oversight reviews. It can also be left out of the annual count of how many queries take place. He contrasts this with testimony from FBI Director Kash Patel, who told a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on Sept. 15, 2026, that FBI queries are "over 99 percent compliant," citing the FISC. Laperruque suggests the undisclosed ruling undercuts that claim. He does not show that the compliance figure is wrong.

Members of Congress who have read the opinion have described it in sharp terms. Laperruque reports that Rep. Thomas Massie said it "raises serious concerns about FBI implementation of FISA 702," and that Sen. Ron Wyden said it outlines "major compliance problems." In late October, Wyden and Sen. Adam Schiff wrote to the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence that the opinion "details serious abuses of Americans' rights."

The Disclosure Obligation

The legal argument rests on a statute that the essay does not name in its text. Laperruque writes that Congress passed a law requiring disclosure of important FISC opinions and later amended it to require disclosure within six months. He says the intelligence community has missed that deadline, has not released the ruling, and has not said whether it will. In his view, the withholding is itself a compliance failure. He urges Congress not to rush an extension before the opinion is released or without debate and votes on meaningful reforms.

Competing Readings of the Record

The opinion arrives in a debate where both sides lean on compliance data. A Nov. 11, 2025 Lawfare analysis by Preston Marquis citing ODNI's Annual Statistical Transparency Report, noted that FBI U.S. person queries fell about 90 percent, from roughly 57,000 (December 2022 to November 2023) to about 5,500 (December 2023 to November 2024), a period that spans the April 2024 enactment of the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act (RISAA). It also noted that the DOJ Inspector General's first post-RISAA review found the FBI no longer engaged in widespread noncompliant querying. Marquis described reform options as well, including a warrant requirement for U.S. person queries, which the House narrowly rejected in 2024, and a court order before analysts view query results. He noted that a Brooklyn federal court had found the government erred by not obtaining a warrant for certain queries in an early-2010s counterterrorism investigation.

On the other side, Stewart Baker argued in Lawfare on Feb. 4, 2026, that Section 702 should be reauthorized permanently with as few new amendments as possible. He warned that Congress would not be forgiven if an attack succeeded because it let the authority lapse or made it too risky for agents to use. Patel's July essay raised a separate concern. Audit rules are triggered when an analyst enters a U.S. person search term, and a large language model that matches on meaning could surface a particular American without anyone entering that person's identifier. Patel noted that Congress has not addressed how AI is being built into Section 702 programs.

What Comes Next

Several questions are now tied together: whether the FISC opinion will be released before Congress votes, what became of the appeal the Justice Department announced in April, which the sources reviewed here do not address, and whether lawmakers will treat unlogged filtered searches as queries. The sources reviewed here do not indicate a scheduled floor vote. If the March deadline holds, Congress will have to decide on a long-term reauthorization without the full record that some of its members say they have already seen.

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