Cybersecurity Policy Report, Administration ‘Ignored’ Request for Info About Flaws in Surveillance Program, Wyden Says, (May 18, 2026)
Organizations Mentioned:Director of National Intelligence
Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) expressed dismay over the weekend after the Trump administration missed a deadline for declassifying a federal court opinion that outlined flaws in the federal government’s use of its surveillance authorities.
The May 15 deadline for the release of the court’s opinion had been set by Sens. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) and Mark Warner (D., Va.), the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, respectively, in a letter to the Department of Justice and Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Sen. Wyden noted in a news release on Saturday.
Sens. Cotton and Warner had requested declassification of an opinion from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) that outlined deficiencies in the federal government’s use of its Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) authorities, Sen. Wyden said.
Sen. Wyden had sought declassification of the FISC’s opinion, which he said would inform the Senate’s debate over reauthorization of FISA section 702 (CPR, April 10).
“The executive branch has ignored a request from the chair and vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee for basic transparency about FISA surveillance,” Sen. Wyden said. “It's clear that this administration cannot be trusted with unfettered, warrantless surveillance of Americans. Every member of Congress should keep this in mind when we consider FISA 702 in a few weeks.”
The FISC opinion reportedly expressed concern about how data collected under FISA section 702 was filtered in ways that undercounted the number of times Americans’ communications were searched.
Although FISA section 702 empowers the federal government to monitor the communications of foreigners who are overseas and considered national security threats, Americans’ communications are collected when they communicate with a foreign intelligence target, a practice that Sen. Wyden and other critics describe as “warrantless surveillance.”
The warrantless surveillance issue has divided Congress and delayed efforts to reauthorize section 702, which expires June 12 (CPR, May 1). The Trump administration has requested a “clean,” 18-month reauthorization of section 702, but a significant number of lawmakers want reauthorization legislation to require federal agencies to obtain probable-cause warrants before accessing Americans’ communications collected under section 702.
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