The US Government Is Hiding a Secret Court Ruling About How It Spies on Americans

Seven months after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court raised concerns about warrantless searches of Americans' communications, the Trump administration has failed to make the ruling public despite a statutory deadline. Senators Ron Wyden and Adam Schiff say the administration is illegally withholding the findings until Congress renews a controversial surveillance program.

The program, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), allows federal agents to read Americans' communications without a warrant. It lapsed in June but collection continues under the court's March approval. The administration's own documentation requires such rulings to be reviewed for public release within 180 days, a window that closed September 13.

Court Concerns

The court objected to search filters that let intelligence analysts pull Americans' messages from intercepted data without proper approvals, written justifications, or records required by law. Despite these concerns, the court approved another year of surveillance. The ruling has never been made public, and the senators have given the administration until November 6 to explain the delay and name responsible officials.

Public Pressure

The Trump administration has previously promised to release the ruling, with Attorney General Todd Blanche committing in July to declassify it by the 180-day deadline.

The court found that tools used to narrow intercepted data to Americans' messages constitute searches subject to legal limits, and ordered them rebuilt, according to The New York Times. The Justice Department is reportedly appealing portions of the ruling that limit the government's use of certain filtering tools.

Compliance Questions

Intelligence agency fact sheets cited a 98.9 percent compliance rate for FBI searches of Americans and credited Section 702 with stopping a planned terrorist attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna. However, this figure doesn't appear in the Justice Department inspector general's October 2025 review, which put the compliance rate at 98.6 percent and concluded that FBI compliance issues may not be entirely resolved.

FBI director Kash Patel closed the bureau's Office of Internal Auditing last May, moving its auditors to another division. The bureau's search counts before 2025 also omit queries run through a participants filter, which the government's privacy watchdog says are "not possible to track."

Lawmakers React

Senator Dick Durbin, after reading the ruling, told colleagues their "opinion of the role of FISA and the rights of Americans will be impacted for sure." Wyden has also warned about a classified interpretation of Section 702 that multiple administrations have relied on and refused to declassify.

The Trump administration may try to attach the renewal to the annual defense authorization bill, which Congress typically finalizes in December. The court's current approval of the program expires in March, giving lawmakers additional time to debate the issue once the secret ruling is made public.