🔒Himes at odds with some Dems, constituents over surveillance law

To a certain degree, U.S. Rep. Jim Himes is prepared for pushback over a controversial surveillance law whenever it comes up for a reauthorization vote. But the warrantless surveillance program is getting outsized attention this time around, even in Himes’ district in the southwestern corner of Connecticut. The ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee is one of the main players at the center of a revived debate over Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or FISA — a law he’s supported for years. And it places the Connecticut Democrat in an unusual position: on the same side as the president and at odds with some in his own party as well as a vocal group of constituents back home. Section 702 of FISA allows the U.S. to monitor foreigners outside of the U.S. without obtaining a warrant and is largely used to help with counterterrorism efforts. A consequence is that the communications of those targets with Americans can also get swept up. Lawmakers are set to return to D.C. just one week before it expires on April 20. The divide on this issue has been longstanding and doesn’t cut through traditional party lines. A coalition of Republicans and Democrats worried about privacy rights and Fourth Amendment issues have raised red flags for years and want to see more significant reforms. Still, the periodic reauthorizations of 702 have been able to clear Congress with bipartisan support. But this year, those concerns have been magnified, particularly for Democrats, because of the current political climate and renewed fears over data privacy more broadly. “The authorization is complicated this time around by the Trump administration’s constant lawlessness and the suspicion and lack of trust that generates,” Himes said in an interview, adding that it’s also been roiled by what he says are “misconceptions” about Section 702 and issues he maintains aren’t directly connected to it. But critics in both parties have sounded the alarm for years about the communications of Americans that end up in a database because they communicated with a target under Section 702. Still, supporters and even some critics acknowledge it has been a key tool in combatting terrorist attacks and cyberattacks. With President Donald Trump reversing his position and wanting an extension without changes, GOP leaders plan to take up an 18-month renewal. Republicans narrowly control Congress and the agenda, but with the challenge of locking down enough of their own members after a delayed vote, Democratic votes will likely come into play — and the rare opportunity for leverage as the minority party. Yet Himes has been pushing his Democratic colleagues to get behind a short-term extension of 702. Based on the intelligence briefings he receives, he’s been making the argument that he hasn’t seen evidence of Trump intentionally abusing it during either his first or second term. But he acknowledges reauthorization will be a much tougher sell in a couple of weeks. “That’s my message to my colleagues. It’s totally legitimate to say I don’t trust the Trump administration. I don’t trust the Trump administration. But what Jim Himes gets is that he regularly gets statutorily required reports on misuse of 702. And Donald Trump has been president six years, and there has never been an instance of deliberate political misuse of 702,” he said. “I don’t think we want to let this thing expire.” Major doubts on an extension without reforms remain on both sides of the aisle. And privacy and civil liberties organizations believe the reauthorization of FISA’s 702 program is the best opportunity to address warrant and data collection issues regarding Americans and to build on the modest reforms Congress passed in 2024. “This has been a lightning rod for both surveillance hawks and privacy advocates since it was enacted in 2008,” Sean Vitka, executive director of Demand Progress, said. His advocacy group has been pushing for comprehensive FISA reforms related to the 702 program for years. “The fight’s really picking up where it left off two years ago.” He sees Himes as a key player who he argues shouldn’t let his party’s influence in the fight go to waste: “He is actively the vector for this extension in the Democratic Party.”

What is Section 702 and why is it controversial?

FISA has been around since 1978, but Section 702 was enacted three decades later. That provision allows the targeting of non-U.S. persons “who are reasonably believed to be outside the United States” to collect foreign intelligence information. Electronic communication service providers like telecommunications companies must assist in the collection of that information. They turn over records consisting of communications like phone calls, messages and emails to government agencies. A special court, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or FISC, certifies the targeting procedures on an annual basis. Once those are approved, government officials direct those service providers to hand over the necessary information. One of the biggest ramifications is the collection of communications of Americans. If they interacted with someone surveilled under the 702 program, that information was likely picked up and stored in a database that government officials can search without warrants in certain instances. That has prompted constitutional concerns around the Fourth Amendment, which prevents unreasonable search and seizure. The law prohibits the targeting of people located in the U.S. or citizens who are abroad. And it also bans a practice known as “reverse targeting,” surveilling a foreigner who is outside of the U.S. for the explicit purpose of getting information on someone inside the country or a citizen. Nearly all of Connecticut’s delegation supported the last reauthorization. In 2024, all five in the House approved the two-year renewal along with reforms. But there was a split in the Senate: Richard Blumenthal supported it, while Chris Murphy opposed it.

Pushback in a changing political climate

When politicians return home to their districts, they tend to get more of an earful about high-profile national issues and economic woes. As he went to an event in Westport to speak to constituents last week, Himes was greeted by a group of protesters in Connecticut’s 4th District. He engaged with them and their concerns over FISA as well as with one of the congressman’s challengers. Himes is running for a 10th term in November. Like the push that failed two years ago, critics want to require a warrant to review Americans’ data that was collected as part of the 702 program. The House voted on an amendment to address this, but it failed in a tied 212-212 vote. All five Democratic members of Connecticut’s House delegation, including Himes, voted against it. Intelligence and law enforcement agencies like the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency can make queries and search for a U.S. persons’ communications in these databases. Advocates for reform refer to them colloquially as “backdoor searches.” “We have said for a long time, this is an emergent serious warrantless surveillance debate that Congress needs to have and set rules around. And because we won that on the floor two years ago, we are fighting for it again this time,” Vitka said. Himes knows these searches are at the heart of complaints around the program. The congressman said he would consider certain reforms on this front but noted he wants to protect defensive queries, which warn an American citizen or resident about a potential threat to them. He thinks Congress can debate such ideas in the future. “702 is an appropriately controversial subject because it does capture, incidentally, U.S. persons’ information, and that’s a big deal. And that’s the focus of a lot of ongoing reform and care and oversight,” the congressman said. “I’m not even sure I have an argument with people who say that it should be a warrant, but I do want to fix this question of how then do we protect a defensive query,” he said. There have been notable instances of the FBI’s noncompliance with the 702 program with improper searches related to Black Lives Matter protesters, individuals who breached the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and federal lawmakers. Last year, FBI Director Kash Patel closed an auditing office that looked into the misuse of such surveillance. In recent years and since the implementation of some reforms in 2024, FBI queries into U.S. persons have dropped. In 2022, the number of queries was at 119,000. Last year, it logged a little over 7,400 searches, a slight uptick from 2024. Another big issue to reemerge is over what’s been dubbed the “data broker loophole” — something Himes has vehemently pushed back against. It refers to the collection of commercial information by third-party data brokers that private entities and the government can purchase. Patel confirmed at a recent Senate intelligence hearing that the FBI is buying commercially available data like location history. A coalition of more than a 100 groups sent a letter to leaders in both parties calling for any reauthorization of Section 702 to include reforms. They argued that the collection by data brokers “facilitates mass surveillance and circumvents FISA reforms Congress enacted in 2015 to prohibit domestic bulk data collection.” The Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that the government needs to get a warrant to access bulk information. Himes argued the 702 program doesn’t “have anything to do with the acquisition of commercially available data. There may be a data broker loophole in some other legislation, but it’s not in 702.” But reformers — including the likes of Connecticut Attorney General William Tong — see the vehicle of 702 reauthorization as a way to address the government collection of sensitive data on Americans where a warrant would be needed and how the proliferation of artificial intelligence could play into that. Legislative efforts such as the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act narrowly passed the House in a bipartisan vote in 2024, but all Connecticut members opposed it. The Senate didn’t take it up. Himes said there should likely be some oversight and new legislation on the AI front, especially after the dust-up between the Pentagon and its push on how it wanted to use the AI systems from Anthropic. But he said artificial intelligence can’t be used in the surveillance tool in question and “doesn’t have anything to do with 702, full stop.”

Himes’ support for FISA over time

Himes has always been a strong proponent of FISA and Section 702, which he says provides much of the information used in intelligence briefings for the president. He argues the threat of the tool expiring puts the country at “severe risk.” He supported the 2024 reauthorization that included dozens of reforms. But critics also pointed to a 2024 amendment with the former GOP chairman of the House Intelligence Committee that broadened the definition of electronic communications service providers. It was slightly narrowed after critics decried how the definition could be over-interpreted. Himes said he remains open to additional reforms that are pertinent to the explicit work of Section 702. But it seems unlikely any will get taken up as part of this year’s reauthorization. Supporters have their work cut out for them when Congress returns from its two-week recess and has only a matter of days to act before the April 20 expiration. (It’s unlikely that the program would immediately shut off if lawmakers let it lapse). The nearly 100-member Congressional Progressive Caucus took a formal position of opposing Section 702 of FISA “without dramatic reforms.” U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro is the only member of Connecticut’s delegation to belong to the group. DeLauro is still weighing how she’ll vote. “I believe that national security and the privacy of American citizens must both be protected, and I am continuing to evaluate the proposed FISA reauthorization bill with those goals in mind,” DeLauro said in a statement. “This is a time of elevated danger for our country, due to President Trump’s decision to launch a war with Iran and keep the Department of Homeland Security shut down for over 50 days in order to avoid making needed reforms to ICE. The Trump Administration must be reined in so that American citizens are not in fear of government overreach.” Trump himself has changed his tune on FISA since Section 702 was last reauthorized in 2024. At the time, Trump, who was a candidate for president at the time, posted “KILL FISA” on social media. But when he was in office during his first term, Trump signed into law a six-year authorization in 2018. Trump’s current position aligns with that of the Biden administration, which was in power the last time 702 needed reauthorization. In 2023, Biden’s President’s Intelligence Advisory Board called the “cost of failure real” as Congress debated the last reauthorization. In a report released late last week, Trump’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board referred to FISA’s 702 as “one of the country’s most valuable tools for foreign intelligence collection.” The independent oversight panel notably only has one member who is a Republican. The three others who were Democrats were pushed out by the Trump administration shortly after taking office. But the congressman sees a major difference in how the two administrations handled reauthorization. He recalls Biden’s attorney general taking members out to lunch a year ahead of the expiration. This time, he characterized the Trump White House as “lackadaisical” in its approach, which he said started only several weeks ago.

To reform or not to reform?

Proponents for reform see FISA reauthorization later this month as one of their only chances to get something done. Even with the open-ended promises of negotiating or debating such changes, Congress has even less time with fights over government funding and less of an appetite to legislate more controversial items in an election year. But there are a number of legislative efforts that would attach reforms to the extension of FISA’s 702 program. The bipartisan Government Surveillance Reform Act of 2026, among other things, requires warrants for viewing Americans’ information that was incidentally collected under Section 702 with exceptions for emergencies and blocks federal agencies from buying Americans’ information from data brokers without obtaining a warrant. Tong joined 16 other state attorneys general who name-checked this legislation as a way to address some lingering issues. “Now, out-of-control federal agencies are buying this data to evade constitutional protections and track and surveil vast aspects of our private lives,” Tong said in a recent statement. “Congress must ensure our laws keep pace with evolving technological threats and put a stop to this chilling domestic surveillance immediately.” The math is hard in either scenario that the House pursues to approve the program. If Republicans take the normal route, they will need to produce nearly all the votes in a procedural vote known as a rule, which sets up debate before final passage. They only have a couple of votes to spare given their ultra-slim majority. But with a number of Republicans threatening to oppose, they could take an alternative path that would require substantial Democratic support. To avoid passing a rule, the House could pass it on suspension. That means instead of the usual simple majority, they would need to clear a two-thirds threshold. That’s where Democratic supporters like Himes come in, though he doesn’t ultimately get a final say in a Republican-controlled Congress. Critics of FISA 702 like Demand Progress argue that if Himes still wants to see some reforms, now is the time to pursue it — not after Congress takes up its reauthorization. “If he wants reforms,” Vitka said, “he has unprecedented leverage and a window to get them done here.”