Democrat Senators Ron Wyden and Adam Schiff say the Trump administration is illegally withholding a secret surveillance-court ruling that faulted how intelligence analysts search Americans' messages, while pressing Congress to renew the program the ruling covers. The two lawmakers laid out the charge in a demand letter first reported by WIRED.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court issued the opinion on March 17, according to Nextgov. It objected to search filters that let analysts pull Americans' communications out of intercepted data without the approvals, written justifications and records the law requires, WIRED reports, and then approved another year of Section 702 surveillance anyway. The law gives the government 180 days to review a ruling like this for public release. That window closed September 13. The administration's own guidance says the same.

The senators want an explanation for the delay, and the names of the officials responsible, by November 6. "If this administration won't follow this simple statutory directive," they wrote to Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton and Attorney General Todd Blanche, "it is unclear why Congress or the American people should trust this administration to follow any of the other legal limits to Section 702." The letter is dated Monday, and Demand Progress and 22 other groups, from the ACLU to a conservative-backed privacy group, urged congressional leaders not to renew the program while the ruling stays buried.