Congress keeps finding itself in the same place with Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act: up against a deadline, divided over reforms, and forced into last-minute decisions on a program everyone agrees is essential.
This time, the deadline is not theoretical. On April 30, Congress passed a 45-day extension only hours before Section 702 was set to lapse, pushing the next deadline to June 12. It was already the second short-term extension in 10 days. That is no way to govern one of the most sensitive intelligence authorities in American law.
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Now the debate has a warning sign: President Donald Trump’s decision to name Bill Pulte, a housing official with no evident intelligence or national-security background, as acting Director of National Intelligence. The issue is not only Pulte. It is whether Congress should keep writing surveillance law as if every future official overseeing it will be experienced, restrained, and trusted.
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Congress should stop treating reauthorization as a once-every-few-years standoff and move to a shorter, recurring authorization period, paired with enforceable safeguards and regular reporting. A two- to four-year cycle would preserve the tool while making oversight continuous.
Section 702 is too important to govern on autopilot.
A shorter reauthorization cycle would help in three ways. It would make oversight routine instead of episodic, requiring Congress to evaluate regularly how the authority is being used, who is overseeing it, and whether safeguards are working. It would allow policy to keep pace with technology, threats, and the risks of misuse, politicization, and overcollection. And it would help rebuild trust through consistent oversight, transparency, and accountability.
I’ve seen firsthand how critical this authority is. As Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, I worked on threats that do not respect borders: illicit fentanyl supply chains, transnational criminal networks, hostile actors, and rapidly evolving trafficking routes. Before the last reauthorization, I argued for explicitly incorporating counternarcotics into the program — a recognition of how central transnational drug networks have become to national security.
Section 702 allows intelligence agencies to collect communications of non-U.S. persons overseas, giving visibility into networks that move faster than traditional investigative tools. That includes trafficking organizations moving fentanyl through layered global supply chains. Across administrations of both parties, the value of this authority has been clear. The debate has never really been about whether Section 702 works. It does.
The problem is whether Americans trust how it is used.
That gap has been building for years. In my work with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, support for the program was often paired with hesitation about its guardrails, particularly around FBI queries. Authorities of this scale depend on public confidence. When that confidence erodes, even effective programs become politically fragile.
The 2024 reauthorization reflected that tension. Congress acted, and the reforms were serious. They tightened oversight and imposed new limits. But they did not resolve whether the current framework is sufficient to prevent misuse and maintain public confidence. Reviews have continued to identify improper queries, reinforcing concerns that safeguards are not always applied as intended.
Pulte’s appointment makes that concern harder to wave away. If lawmakers are uncomfortable with an acting intelligence chief lacking national-security experience overseeing this authority, they should not pass a long reauthorization that assumes only seasoned officials will ever hold power. Surveillance law should be designed for the system we have, not the system we hope we have.
Critics will argue that intelligence agencies need long-term certainty. That concern is real. But certainty without credible oversight is part of what brought us here. A shorter, predictable cycle would provide continuity while ensuring review is built into the system.
This is not about weakening Section 702. It is about making it sustainable.
The United States still needs the capability to track foreign threats in real time. But the expectation that such a powerful authority can operate with only intermittent scrutiny is no longer tenable — especially when intelligence leadership can shift suddenly to an acting official with no apparent intelligence background and no Senate confirmation for that role.
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With the June 12 deadline approaching, Congress should not stumble into a third short-term patch or accept another long authorization on trust alone. Congress should preserve Section 702, strengthen the safeguards, and build oversight into the statute itself.
That means giving Section 702 what it has long needed: not another last-minute scramble, but a clock.
Dr. Rahul Gupta is President of GATC Health, a leading tech-bio company focused on AI-predictive biology, and drug discovery. He previously served as director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy in the Biden administration.
