A top Democrat urges his colleagues to support Trump’s spy machine

US Congressman Jim Himes, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, is privately pressing his colleagues to preserve the FBI’s authority to conduct warrantless searches of Americans’ communications, arguing that he has seen no evidence that the Trump administration is abusing its power, WIRED has learned.

In a letter obtained by WIRED, Himes urged his fellow Democrats to support the White House’s request to renew the controversial surveillance program that intercepts the electronic data of foreigners abroad. While targeting foreigners, the program – authorized under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act – also sweeps up vast amounts of private messages belonging to US citizens.

Himes’ proposal is based on “56 reforms” passed by Congress in 2024, which codified the FBI’s internal protocols as an alternative to constitutional orders. In the letter, Hymes claims these changes “work as intended” to prevent domestic abuse, citing a compliance rate of “exceeding 99 percent” over the past two years.

However, the structural underpinnings of this defense have been fundamentally changed by recent changes within the FBI. For example, Hymes’ “99 percent” compliance metric was produced by the Office of Internal Audit — a unit that long served as a smoke alarm designed to detect illegality, but no longer exists.

The unit was closed by FBI Director Kash Patel last year. Landmark court opinions based on its data had previously uncovered hundreds of thousands of invalid searches conducted by the FBI. Without requiring auditors to calculate failure rates, the compliance mechanisms Hymes refers to ceased to work effectively.

In a statement, Himes’ office largely reiterated the positions laid out in his letter to colleagues. “I am open to further reforms to Section 702, building on the many successful reforms we made in the reauthorization legislation two years ago,” he says. “Reauthorizing Section 702 in the short term will enable Congress to thoroughly debate the pros and cons of these proposed reforms — and determine whether compromise is possible — without jeopardizing our national security by allowing the program to lapse.”

As a member of the so-called Gang of Eight — a bipartisan group of lawmakers who were briefed on top-secret information — Himes has some deep knowledge of the spyware. However, his letter contains several other allegations that appear to be fundamentally inconsistent with the FISA oversight mechanisms.

“Because of how heavily it is supervised by all three branches of government, any effort to abuse the program would almost certainly become known to the FISA Court and Congress,” says Himes.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is a secret court that does not have an investigative arm to audit FBI databases. Like Congress, its oversight role is purely reactive, relying entirely on the US Department of Justice to self-report violations.

“Neither Congress nor the FISA Court conduct independent audits of FBI inquiries,” says Lisa Goitein, director of the Brennan Center’s Freedom and National Security Program. “They rely on the Department of Justice to conduct comprehensive audits and report findings truthfully and quickly. The Department of Justice has gutted these internal oversight mechanisms and has been rebuked by dozens of federal courts for providing inaccurate, misleading, or incomplete information.”

There are no judges standing between the FBI and the private communications of millions of Americans, which Himes and other members of his committee argue is necessary for the government to quickly respond to terrorist threats. Critics say that given the current administration’s efforts to dismantle the FBI’s internal controls, this is a massive security vulnerability, leaving Americans vulnerable to surveillance breaches that would take years to declassify — if they are reported at all.