IC Oversight & Authorities — 2026-05-09

Declassified FISA Court Opinion Reveals Continuing FBI Section 702 Filtering Violations Extending Across IC

A declassified March 17 FISA Court opinion, released as part of the Wyden-secured deal during the 45-day Section 702 extension, found that filtering tool abuses the DOJ claimed to have fixed in early 2025 are ongoing and extend beyond the FBI across the intelligence community. According to Brennan Center analysis published May 8, the FBI had been using an "advanced filter function" that enabled U.S. person queries of raw Section 702 data without following RISAA procedural requirements, including tracking, recording justifications, or obtaining approvals, and is now using another tool with the same functionality with DOJ approval. The court documented that surveillance targets included a sitting state court judge who had complained to the FBI about alleged civil rights violations by a municipal police chief. The FISC determined that narrowing results to an American's collected communications effectively converts a foreign-target search into a U.S.-person query subject to stricter safeguards, and ordered agencies to reengineer the filtering tools.

Analysis
The March opinion's documented scope leaves DOJ's early-2025 remediation claims exposed as either incomplete or abandoned, per a single Brennan Center report not independently corroborated, sharpening congressional leverage entering the reauthorization negotiation. Whether FISC also imposes binding compliance requirements before the 45-day extension expires in mid-June 2026 is genuinely uncertain, with the court's consistent preference for negotiated remediation cutting against a formal directive even under political pressure. DOJ may have permitted the declassification selectively to surface violations already under constraint, preserving higher-priority collection programs from filter-function scrutiny now headed to Congress.
1 sources
  1. New FISA Court Opinion Reveals Continuing Violations by the FBI - Brennan Center for Justice

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UNCLASSIFIED // OPEN SOURCE