Admin Ignores Senate Intel Leaders’ Demand for Declassification Within 15 Days; Hides Abuse Ahead of Key FISA Votes
Washington, D.C. — On Saturday, the Trump administration appears to have missed a deadline to declassify an opinion from the surveillance court showing continuing violations of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Earlier this month, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), secured a commitment from Senate Intelligence Committee leaders— Chairman Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA)—to ensure the declassification of the court opinion within 15 days as part of the ongoing negotiations over renewing FISA. Those 15 days officially came and went on Friday without any declassification.
Demand Progress is part of a bipartisan coalition urging Congress to close loopholes in the law that allow the government to bypass the courts to surveil Americans.
The following is a statement from Demand Progress Senior Policy Advisor Hajar Hammado:
“The failure to meet the promised declassification deadline shows that the Trump administration intends to enter the next FISA negotiations in bad faith, just like Speaker Johnson. The question now is whether the likes of Cotton, Warner and Himes will continue to roll over and support the White House’s surveillance agenda anyway.
We know that the FISA court ruling shows the government repeatedly violated the law to surveil Americans. The only reason not to declassify this court opinion is to cover up the government’s wrongdoing and ensure that it can continue. Speaker Johnson tried multiple times to use bad faith tricks to renew FISA without any privacy protections and failed every time. If Congress wants to stop banging its head against FISA over and over, congressional leaders simply need to allow votes on real privacy reforms. In fact, it’s clear after April that the greatest threat to FISA is not privacy reform but congressional leadership’s opposition to fair votes.”
A robust set of resources on the need for privacy reforms for FISA are available here and here, and additional background, context, polling, reform demands, resources and other information is available here.