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House Votes To Extend Surveillance Powers Until April 30

The US House of Representatives on Friday passed a bill extending Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) - which was notoriously abused so spy on the 2016 Trump campaign, and has been used for "backdoor searches" targeting Americans. Friday's vote - via unanimous consent after a longer five-year reauthorization pushed by Republicns failed to advance - extends Section 702 until April 30. 

The short-term measure now moves to the Senate, which faces a looming deadline: the current authorization expires April 20. The vote comes despite a well-documented history of FISA abuses spanning both individualized Title I warrants and the bulk warrantless collection under Section 702, as detailed in multiple Department of Justice Inspector General reports, declassified Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) opinions, and congressional oversight findings.

President Donald Trump had urged Republicans to support a clean extension, citing the law’s critical role in national security while personally recounting what he described as "the worst and most illegal abuse of FISA in our Nation’s History.” Trump referenced the FBI’s use of FISA during the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into his 2016 presidential campaign. At the same time, he stressed that the U.S. military "desperately needs” Section 702 to protect troops and diplomats, particularly amid ongoing operations against Iran’s nuclear program.

"With the ongoing successful Military activities against the Terrorist Iranian Regime, it is more important than ever that we remain vigilant, PROTECT our Homeland, Troops, and Diplomats stationed abroad,” Trump said. He added that generals he consulted called the authority "VITAL,” especially in the current geopolitical climate.

Heaven forbid he demand reforms and more oversight. 

Section 702 permits the government to collect communications of non-U.S. persons located outside the United States without a warrant. However, it inevitably captures "incidental” communications involving American citizens, who can then be searched in the database through so-called "backdoor” queries - often without a warrant or probable cause. Critics on both sides of the aisle have long warned that the program effectively enables warrantless domestic surveillance.

Long-Standing and Systemic Abuses

FISA was enacted in 1978 in direct response to revelations from the Church Committee about executive-branch spying on civil-rights leaders, anti-war activists, and political opponents. Yet official records show recurring compliance failures and misuse in the decades since.

The highest-profile case of targeted surveillance involved Carter Page, a former Trump campaign foreign-policy adviser. A December 2019 DOJ Inspector General report by Michael Horowitz identified 17 significant inaccuracies and omissions across four FISA warrant applications and renewals. These included heavy reliance on the unverified Steele dossier - funded by the Clinton campaign and DNC - without disclosing its political origins, lack of corroboration, or exculpatory evidence (such as Page’s prior reporting as a CIA source). The FBI also failed to correct the record with the FISC.

FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith later pleaded guilty to altering an email to falsely claim Page was not a CIA source, helping secure a renewal. Special Counsel John Durham’s subsequent investigation further criticized the FBI’s predication and handling of the Russia probe. The DOJ later admitted in court filings that it lacked probable cause for at least some of the Page renewals. Recent 2026 disclosures by Sen. Chuck Grassley have raised similar questions about possible FISA surveillance of another Trump adviser, Walid Phares, involving the same FBI attorney.

These were not isolated. A 2002 FISC review found the FBI had included false or misleading statements in at least 75 FISA applications, leading to the barring of a senior counterterrorism official from ever appearing before the court. A 2020 IG audit of the FBI’s "Woods procedures” (accuracy-check protocols) examined 29 applications and found apparent errors or inadequately supported facts in every one of the 25 reviewed in detail.

Section 702 "Backdoor" Searches on U.S. Persons

The scale of abuse under the warrantless program has drawn even sharper criticism from the FISC itself, which has repeatedly described FBI compliance failures as "persistent and widespread.”

Between 2020 and early 2022, the FBI conducted more than 278,000 searches of Section 702 data that violated legal standards or internal policy. In 2021 alone, total U.S.-person queries reached approximately 3.4 million, with hundreds of thousands flagged as improper.

Declassified FISC opinions document concrete examples of misuse:

• Queries on Black Lives Matter protesters, Jan. 6 arrestees, and participants in purely domestic criminal investigations (health-care fraud, gang violence, public corruption) with no foreign-intelligence nexus.
• A batch query on 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign.
• Searches targeting a U.S. Senator, a state senator, a state court judge, journalists, political commentators, and even FBI "Citizens Academy” participants.
• Personal abuses, including agents querying data on romantic partners, family members, online-dating matches, or rental tenants.

FISC rulings from 2018 through 2023 repeatedly faulted the FBI’s minimization procedures, record-keeping, and "batch” querying practices. A 2025 DOJ OIG report acknowledged some improvement after the 2024 Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act but warned that ongoing oversight remains essential.

Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) offered an amendment April 15 that would have required the Justice Department to obtain a court order before querying Americans’ data, with narrow exceptions for urgent threats. "FISA 702 is too critical to allow it to expire, but the legitimate concerns about the possibility of abuse also demand that we consider additional reforms,” Himes stated. The amendment was not adopted.

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US Intelligence Believes China Weighing Sending Iran Advance Radar Systems

US intelligence is flagging early signs that Beijing may have been eyeing a move into the Iran conflict - quietly considering sending advanced radar systems, which it is said to have been mulling since near the opening of the US-Israel war which kicked off last month.

These anti-Beijing allegations are contained in fresh CBS News reporting, citing analysts at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), who conclude China was actively weighing whether to equip Tehran with upgraded radar capabilities.

via GT

It should be recalled that earlier parallel reports said Moscow was feeding Iran intelligence on US military positions across the Middle East - raising the specter of a broader shadow alignment forming behind the scenes.

"This technology would significantly enhance Iran's ability to detect and track incoming threats, like low-flying drones and cruise missiles, and could help protect its air defense systems against advanced strikes," CBS writes.

The report continues, "It remains unclear whether China ultimately moved forward with the transfer but the assessment underscores Washington's concern that the Iranian war is drawing in not only regional adversaries but also global competitors willing to provide critical support, short of direct military involvement, the officials said."

The ability of the Iranians to hit faraway precision targets, including for example an expensive US radar base in Jordan, suggested it may have already had some external satellite and targeting help. Any new China radar transfer could help Iran rebuild its largely decimated defenses.

The significant Iranian retaliation against US regional bases and against Gulf facilities last month came as a surprise or even shock to the US administration, which appeared somewhat unprepared - and this has been subject of much recent reporting. For example:

Such anti-China allegations have been previewed before, but the idea of advanced Chinese radar technological on the ground in Iran might have been a game-changer in terms of preserving more of its own anti-air and missile capabilities.

All of these allegations, which come anonymously via unnamed US intel officials, must be treated with appropriate skepticism, however - given that war propaganda will inevitably be thick in such a hot conflict.

China, for its part, has been vehemently denying these repeat charges of some kind of deepened support for the Islamic Republic amid the war. It says it stands for peace and dialogue, and has called for urgent de-escalation and the unblocking of the Hormuz Strait.

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