Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act

The Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act (RISAA), Pub. L. 118-49, was enacted on April 20, 2024, reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act through April 20, 2026. It represented Congress's response to a documented period of significant compliance failures in the FBI's warrantless querying of Section 702 databases, following the disclosure through declassified Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) opinions that the FBI had conducted more than 278,000 non-compliant U.S. person queries between approximately 2020 and early 2022.

Legislative History

The bill emerged from competing proposals backed by the House Judiciary Committee, which favored substantial reforms including a warrant requirement for backdoor searches, and the House Intelligence Committee, which backed more modest procedural changes. House leadership presented RISAA as a compromise.

The central contested issue was whether to require the government to obtain a warrant or FISA Title I order before querying Section 702 databases using a U.S. person identifier. A House floor amendment to impose this warrant requirement, with bipartisan sponsorship, failed by a tied vote of 212-212 on April 12, 2024. This was the closest Congress had come to imposing a warrant requirement on Section 702 backdoor searches since the program was created by the FISA Amendments Act of 2008.

Three House Intelligence Committee amendments expanded Section 702's scope: an expansion of the "facilities" covered by collection directives (passed 236-186), an authority for using Section 702 data in immigration vetting (passed 227-193), and an authority for counter-narcotics purposes (passed 268-152). A House Judiciary Committee amendment requiring enhanced reporting on U.S. person queries passed 269-153. The base bill passed the House 273-147 with bipartisan splits in both directions.¹

Reforms Enacted

RISAA codified the following procedural requirements:

Supervisory approval for certain U.S. person queries. Annual query training for all FBI personnel. Enhanced oversight for "sensitive queries" (queries touching on categories such as elected officials, religious figures, and journalists). Minimum accountability mechanisms for personnel who conduct noncompliant queries, including documentation requirements and notice to supervisors. Enhanced oversight authority for the DOJ Office of Inspector General and Congress, including the right to review FBI query logs. Requirements that the FBI notify the FISC of significant compliance failures on a defined schedule.

RISAA did not impose a warrant requirement for any category of U.S. person query. It did not restrict the use of Section 702 data in domestic investigations generally, and it contained no provision specifically addressing queries related to domestic extremism investigations or the notification of criminal defendants when Section 702 collection had occurred at an investigative stage but was not introduced at trial.²

Post-Enactment Compliance Issues

In August 2024, DOJ overseers discovered that the FBI had been using a querying tool that bypassed RISAA's required approval procedures, allowing personnel to access Section 702 data without adhering to the statutory safeguards. This was identified within months of the statute's enactment. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) and the DOJ OIG continued oversight of FBI compliance with RISAA's requirements, with the OIG releasing report 26-002 in October 2025 finding that while noncompliant query volume had declined substantially, the overall decline in query volume raised concerns about whether agents were conducting queries they should be running.³

2026 Sunset

Section 702 is set to sunset on April 20, 2026, absent further reauthorization. As of mid-2026, the debate over a warrant requirement for U.S. person queries remained unresolved in Congress, with the Hasbajrami district court's January 2025 ruling (imposing a warrant requirement in the Second Circuit) adding judicial pressure to the legislative deliberations.