**House Intelligence Committee Democrat Urges Colleagues to Support Trump Administration's Surveillance Program** United States congressman Jim Himes, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, is privately lobbying his colleagues to preserve the FBI's power to conduct warrantless searches of Americans' communications. According to a letter obtained by WIRED, Himes argues that he has seen no evidence that the Trump administration is abusing its authority. The letter, obtained by WIRED, is in response to the White House's request to renew a controversial surveillance program that intercepts the electronic data of foreigners abroad. Authorized under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the program also sweeps in vast quantities of private messages belonging to US citizens. Himes urges fellow Democrats to support the renewal of the program, citing the "56 reforms" passed by Congress in 2024, which codified the FBI's internal protocols as a substitute for constitutional warrants. Himes claims that these changes are "working as intended" to prevent domestic misuse, citing a compliance rate "exceeding 99 percent" over the past two years. However, the structural foundations of this defense have been fundamentally altered by recent changes within the FBI. The Office of Internal Auditing, which produced the 99 percent compliance metric, was shuttered by FBI Director Kash Patel last year. This unit had previously exposed hundreds of thousands of improper FBI searches through historic court opinions based on its data. The loss of the Office of Internal Auditing has effectively ceased the compliance mechanisms that Himes points to. Without auditors to calculate failure rates, the FBI's internal protocols have lost their effectiveness in preventing domestic misuse. In a statement, Himes' office reiterated the positions laid out in his letter to colleagues, stating that he is open to making further reforms to Section 702. As a member of the so-called Gang of Eight, a bipartisan group of lawmakers briefed on highly sensitive classified information, Himes possesses deep knowledge of the spy program. However, his letter contains several claims that appear at odds with the mechanics of FISA oversight. Himes states that any effort to misuse the program would "almost certainly become known to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and to Congress." However, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is a secret court with no investigative arm to audit FBI databases, relying entirely on the US Justice Department to self-report violations.