Senators say administration is unlawfully withholding surveillance opinion

Two senators say the Trump administration is unlawfully withholding a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinion on Section 702 surveillance, and have demanded an explanation by November 6. Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Adam Schiff of California wrote to Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton and Attorney General Todd Blanche, saying the administration had missed a deadline to declassify the opinion. Their letter also asks the officials to identify those responsible for the delay. The senators’ allegation that the withholding violates the law has not been independently established in the reports. The unpublished opinion concerns a filtering system used to process communications collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Reports on the court’s findings say a judge objected that the system could allow analysts to retrieve Americans’ messages in a way that should be treated as a query of their communications. Such queries are subject to additional safeguards, including authorization, written justification and recordkeeping requirements. The opinion itself has not been made public, so its precise reasoning and the system’s operation...