Privacy Advocates Ambush Himes Over Clean FISA Push

WESTPORT, CONNECTICUT – Shortly after 5 p.m. on Monday, a steel gray Volkswagen Atlas pulled up to the entrance of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA\CT) in the suburban woodlands of southwestern Connecticut. When the man in the passenger seat stepped out, he smiled before greeting two high school students who were handing out flyers. That man was Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and those leafletters were among dozens of protesters who had gathered outside MoCA\CT ahead of a town hall he would be speaking at.

Himes, who is once again at the forefront of the fight to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), appeared to have walked straight into an ambush. Activists with Connecticut High School Democrats, CT 50501, and QuitGPT called on him to change course on FISA and align himself with members of Congress seeking to reform the warrantless spying program, which has allowed U.S. intelligence agencies to surveil foreign nationals abroad and amass troves of communications data, including from American citizens.

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Many of the protesters arrived earlier to set up for the planned action, and by 4 p.m., at least 20 soon-to-be demonstrators had mustered in the parking lot. Less than ten minutes later, police informed them they were “not welcome” and needed to vacate the premises because “this is private property.” They obliged without contest, snapping a quick group photo before making their exit and regrouping across the street.

The protest kicked off around 4:30, and Himes met with his critics in the time he had before the town hall at 5:30. One protester who requested anonymity told the Prospect: “I believe Himes thinks he’s doing the right thing.” Despite this, they said “it was something else seeing him try to explain away the anger [people have toward FISA].”

A particular flashpoint came when Himes noted that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) does not have enough Republican votes to extend the 702 program. The crowd erupted. Someone could be heard shouting: “Then why are you helping?”

Speaker Johnson is indeed scrambling to get those votes. Moreover, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) has said she will try to attach the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, a Jim Crow–coded disenfranchisement bill that would require voters to provide proof of citizenship before registering to vote in federal elections, to the FISA extension. It would be difficult for Luna to link the SAVE Act to any FISA reauthorization, as the House Republican leadership knows they can’t pass the legislation in that form. But even if Luna’s bid fails, a not-so-trivial number of House Republicans have said they would vote against a clean FISA extension unless the SAVE Act passes. More recently, the White House has done a full-court press to get hard-line conservatives on board for a clean extension.

Similar to their colleagues on the other side of the aisle, Democrats are also fracturing over FISA. The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), which is chaired by Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX), has formally committed its 98 members to voting against reauthorization. (Sen. Bernie Sanders is CPC’s only member in the upper chamber.) But this revolt grew after President Trump asked for an 18-month clean extension of the spying capability, which has led Democratic support to dissipate, even among members who have previously voted for reauthorization. The fact that Trump has shown no compunction with using information against his political enemies adds to the Democratic unwillingness to extend his spying powers.

Himes has acknowledged this, while attempting to quell concerns. “There’s a lot of people who are going to switch from yes two years ago to no today,” he told The Hill. “Because even though Donald Trump’s been president for five years, and he has never abused the program—I would know it pretty much in real time if he did—even though that’s true, people don’t trust Donald Trump.”

Despite this, Himes has been working behind the scenes to get Democratic leadership on board with a clean extension of Section 702, which expires on April 20. Wired was the first to report the story. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has not indicated how he will vote on reauthorization.

INSIDE THE RENOVATED early-20th-century stone building that is MoCA\CT, Himes fielded questions from Douglas Weber, publisher and founder of the local news outlet Westport Journal, which sponsored the town hall, and a crowd of mostly retired-aged attendees. When asked about Section 702, Himes described the program as “our most important intelligence collection tool,” emphasizing that it “very literally, day by day, keeps people alive and safe.”

“There have been increasingly rigorous restrictions on the ability of the FBI or anybody else to look at the U.S. person information inside that database,” Himes said, pointing to the 50-some-odd “reforms” passed after the previous FISA fight in 2024. As Wired reported, the so-called reforms, which have been criticized for upholding the status quo on Section 702, “codified the FBI’s own internal protocols.”

But if you ask Himes, these reforms reduced “the number of U.S. person queries from about 120,000 four years ago to about 7,000 today.” Such queries are known as backdoor searches. He also suggested that while Section 702 “is not a commercial data acquisition authority … the government does buy commercially available data from the data brokers.”

One of the core provisions of the updated Government Surveillance Reform Act (GSRA), introduced by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Mike Lee (R-UT) on March 12, seeks to close the backdoor search loophole. The bill would also prohibit U.S. intelligence agencies from purchasing Americans’ private communications from data brokers, engaging in reverse targeting, and forcing U.S.-based enterprises or individuals to secretly spy on their behalf, among other reforms.

According to the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), federal agencies “are supposed to follow certain rules to minimize the chance that Americans’ civil liberties and privacy are violated.” In an interview with the Prospect, Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, POGO’s director of government affairs, said “those comments from Congressman Himes are either unintentionally or intentionally—I’m not sure which is worse—misleading.”

“He’s playing a bit of a rhetorical shell game there,” Hedtler-Gaudette added. “The point is that [U.S. intelligence] agencies are able to go around any warrant requirements because they can access this data on the private market, and I think Mr. Himes knows that.”

Himes also claimed “there is no artificial intelligence used in FISA collection,” and that the program “is also not in any way related to AI.” The Anthropic situation illustrates why FISA critics have cast doubt on this claim. The AI company reportedly told the Pentagon it would consent to U.S. intelligence agencies integrating its technology into the 702 program, but negotiations broke down after the federal government declined Anthropic’s request for a legally binding promise that its tech would not be used to collect unclassified commercial data on American citizens.

“It’s absurdly bad faith for Representative Himes to pretend that artificial intelligence is not a critical part of this spying debate, given that the Pentagon and its contracts with AI companies [are] specifically providing for AI use both of FISA information and commercial data broker information,” said Sean Vitka, executive director of Demand Progress.

During the town hall, one attendee asked Himes if there was a plan to safeguard Americans’ private communications “from the abuse of this regime.” He said “yes,” suggesting that “the number of Americans who are in this database are vanishingly small.” Interestingly, Himes mentioned that Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who voted in favor of reauthorization during the last FISA fight, is likely going to vote no “this time.”

“Jamie’s argument, whose wife is from Westport by the way, is the reason we’re splitting right now,” he said. “Day in and day out, I see what this authority is doing to keep people safe … whereas Jamie lives in a domestic world where he has Pam Bondi publicly humiliating him.”

Himes continued: “I’m not going to tell you that Jamie is wrong. I’m just gonna tell you he looks at the universe through a slightly different lens than I do.”

Later, another attendee asked what Himes is doing for undocumented immigrants “who are maybe considered foreign” and could be targeted by a hostile administration with expansive surveillance powers.

“If you’re a family of undocumented aliens, you still are not subject to having your door knocked down because you have constitutional rights,” Himes said. “The point is, if you’re in our country, you have constitutional rights.”

Conversely, as he observed, foreign nationals abroad “are not entitled to constitutional protections.” But noncitizens seeking permission to enter the U.S. have Himes to thank for ramming through an amendment to Section 702 in 2024 that made it even easier for the federal government to collect their communications data.

“I happen to favor an earned path to citizenship so that people who are undocumented can get in line, and that’s where I am, but let’s stop the dehumanization,” Himes said.

THE TOWN HALL WRAPPED UP around 6:30 p.m. What was once an immaculate spring day had turned to gray, and a light burst of rain showered people as they made a break for the parking lot. Himes agreed to speak with reporters outside the museum before making his exit. He first answered questions from the Prospect.

Asked why privacy activists were removed from the premises before the town hall, Himes made clear that “it wasn’t my decision,” saying the event was “run by the Westport Journal, so he [Douglas Weber] would be the policy-setter on that.”

Despite bashing Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel during the town hall, Himes reiterated his support for a clean FISA extension, suggesting that the 2024 reforms have “actually had a very substantial positive effect reducing the number of U.S. person queries.”

“As I told the protesters … I think we should keep working on this,” he said. “What we shouldn’t do is just stop an authority that keeps Americans alive.”

Finally, the Prospect asked Himes if he would still vote to extend Section 702 if the SAVE Act is attached to it.

 “Oh, hell no,” Himes barked. “No Democrat votes for the SAVE Act.”