Claude and the Constitution: Questions Congress Should Ask Before Renewing Section 702

(Ryan Goodman and Andrew Weissmann – Just Security) By law, on April 20, 2026, a broad tool for intercepting the communications of foreigners abroad – Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act – will sunset, unless Congress decides to renew it. This deadline gives Congress an unusual opportunity to examine the executive branch’s use of this surveillance law, which has been criticized for its ability to sweep in communications of Americans, and to consider its use in the context of other government surveillance tools and authorities. To be sure, having worked in the government, we believe that historically Section 702 has provided the government with an indispensable national security tool with respect to the NSA and other agencies’ detecting foreign threats. But there has also been meaningful bipartisan interest in reforms to the tool. We recognize important long-standing questions and concerns it raises about Americans’ and others’ privacy rights and the parameters governing how the law functions. What makes this moment different is the convergence of two factors: (1) the government’s rapidly expanding deployment of artificial intelligence in its surveillance programs; and (2) greater distrust of government actions involving Americans’ First Amendment political freedoms and Fourth Amendment privacy rights, which courts have repeatedly found to have been violated by this administration. In order to facilitate robust deliberation, we provide the following questions for Members of Congress to ask executive branch officials as part of the Section 702 renewal process. Journalists and the public could – and should – also demand answers to these questions. – Questions Congress Should Ask Before Renewing Section 702