US officials want Section 702 renewed before damaging court ruling goes public

The Trump administration has already been pressed, and has promised, to release the ruling. In April, Senators Tom Cotton and Mark Warner, the Intelligence Committee’s Republican chair and Democratic vice chair, pressed the administration to release it within 15 days so it could inform the Senate’s debate. In July, asked in writing whether he would commit to declassifying it by the 180-day deadline, Blanche replied, “Yes.”

Warner “has been clear that he supports transparency with regard to Section 702,” his communications director, Rachel Cohen, tells WIRED. Neither former director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard nor Bill Pulte, who briefly replaced her as acting director, “were responsive,” Cohen says, “but Senator Warner expects that DNI Clayton will declassify the opinion, consistent with the bipartisan letter and as required by law.”

Cotton’s office did not respond to a request for comment. The White House, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the US Justice Department did not answer questions WIRED sent Friday about the delay.

Clayton, who is legally responsible as director of national intelligence for declassifying the ruling, has made no such promise. Asked before his July confirmation whether he would ensure the opinion was public before Congress voted on reauthorization, he wrote only that the government was “working arduously to expeditiously declassify” it and had made the full opinion available to lawmakers.

Some of what the court found is already known. A FISA court opinion declassified last year described a similar FBI tool, a “participants filter” that let agents select people in contact with surveillance targets and read their messages. In February 2025, the Justice Department’s National Security Division told the court the tool had been running searches no one counted. The FBI shut it off the next month and switched it back on later that year, after the department approved a rebuilt version.

This year’s ruling went beyond that. The court found that tools agencies use to narrow intercepted data to an American’s messages amount to searches of Americans, subject to the same limits, and ordered them rebuilt, The New York Times reported in April, citing unclassified administration talking points sent to lawmakers. Senator Alex Padilla said in a written question to Blanche that the Justice Department “is appealing portions” of the ruling “limiting the government’s use of certain filtering tools.”

Source: arstechnica.com — article syndicated from the publisher’s feed; all rights remain with the original publisher.