Date & Time

Apr 23, 2026 10:30 AM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Description

The Path to Reauthorizing Section 702 of FISA Thursday, April 23, 2026 10:30 - 11:30 am ET Last week, Congress passed a 10-day extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), pushing the sunset date to April 30. As Congress considers the future of FISA Section 702 and weighs potential privacy reforms ahead of that deadline, this bipartisan briefing will help distill legislative proposals, key reforms, and recent developments.

Section 702 of FISA was enacted in 2008 to broaden the scope of FISA, authorizing the government to collect the communications of non-U.S. persons located abroad. In practice, however, Americans’ communications are frequently swept up in these collections and later accessed through warrantless queries. As Congress considers reauthorization, it is important to protect Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights by closing the backdoor search and data broker loopholes.

We will be joined by former Congressman and chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Bob Goodlatte (now with the Project for Privacy and Surveillance Accountability), Liza Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center for Justices’ Liberty & National Security Program, Don Bell, policy counsel at The Constitution Project at the Project on Government Oversight, and and Molly Powell, Senior Policy Analyst at Americans for Prosperity. The panel will be moderated by Amanda Beckham, Government Relations Director with Free Press.

Panelists:
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• Bob Goodlatte, former Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and Senior Policy Advisor for the Project for Privacy & Surveillance Accountability
• Liza Goitein, Brennan Center for Justice, Senior Director of the Liberty & National Security Program
• Don Bell, Project on Government Oversight, Policy Counsel at The Constitution Project
• Molly Powell, Americans for Prosperity, Senior Policy Analyst
• Amanda Beckham (moderator), Free Press, Government Relations Director

Bloomberg’s Annie Bang is reporting on new research commissioned by Swiss-based privacy company Proton. Over the last decade, the government has shown an increasing appetite for user data from companies like Apple, Alphabet, and Meta, with the number of requests increasing 770 percent.

That’s a lot – and it’s a bipartisan habit. As Proton’s Edward Shone told Bloomberg, “This isn’t a blue or red thing – this isn’t a sort of Trump or Biden or Obama thing. It has gone up consistently.”

And that massive increase is just in “standard” requests that are routinely disclosed. The number of requests balloons even more – nearly doubles, in fact – when requests made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) are factored in.

Most of those FISA requests are likely warrantless – obtained via “backdoor” authority granted by the addition of Section 702 in 2008. Instead of being approved by judges, they are batched together and rubber-stamped – meaning no case is made, and there is no showing of probable cause. The Fourth Amendment is bypassed entirely.

Requests for Americans’ data, in just this one slice of the U.S. government’s digital surveillance, adds up to 6.7 million user accounts disclosed over an eleven-year period. It is little wonder, then, that Americans simply do not trust the government with their data.

As FISA and Section 702 come up for renewal this month, urge your representative in the House to support Rep. Andy Biggs’ Protect Liberty Act. Common-sense reforms like these would bring privacy guardrails to Section 702 that would prevent its continued (and obviously growing) abuse as a tool for agencies like the FBI to spy on American citizens without justification.

But the new research by Proton drives home the fact that this isn’t just an FBI problem – it’s a systemic, wide-ranging “government overreach” problem powered by technology. “In many ways, the U.S. government has effectively outsourced its surveillance to Big Tech companies and data brokers,” wrote Proton’s Richie Koch.

Big Tech offers, here and there, end-to-end encryption for users’ communications, from Signal to Apple’s iMessage. But encryption is far from a standard practice. As Elena Constantinescu wrote in describing Proton’s latest report, “Big Tech has repeatedly shown little interest in offering that kind of protection, let alone making it the default, across the services where people store their most sensitive information.” Case in point: Bloomberg noted that Meta just announced the removal of end-to-end encryption for Instagram chats.

Constantinescu is right that privacy begins with tech companies’ designs for their communication services. She writes: “Privacy is a matter of architecture, not just policy.”
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As the government demands more data, strong and ubiquitous encryption would create less data for government to request or access without a warrant. It is time for Silicon Valley to draw a new set of privacy-forward blueprints that start with a Fourth Amendment foundation.

Congress made a solemn promise on surveillance reform to the American people in public, only to break it in private. As a result, the “Make Everyone a Spy” provision allows the government to conscript office-space providers – including those who rent space to media organizations, law firms, and political campaigns – into enabling warrantless surveillance through their buildings’ internet networks. Even churches and other houses of worship can be targeted.
 
As the House debates the reauthorization of Section 702, PPSA and our followers call on House leadership to deliver on this very public promise to narrow the provisions of a loophole in the definition of government electronic communications service providers (ECSP) in Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
How We Got Here
 
When FISA Section 702 was reauthorized in 2024, it included a provision that was intended to allow the government to compel the cooperation of one particular type of company, believed to be providers of cloud computing, to respond to requests for data for national security purposes. The broad language of this provision, however, allows the National Security Agency to secretly demand access to communications equipment from almost every U.S. business or non-profit organization.
During the Senate debate on this intelligence legislation in 2024, key lawmakers admitted that their draft language was overly broad. They insisted there was no time to fix it, but assured their colleagues that after passage they would work to narrow the ECSP language, making a “technical fix” to ensure that only appropriate entities could be compelled to assist in surveillance. House Intelligence Committee leaders indicated openness to that correction, calling it “totally fine.” 
 
As the U.S. House of Representatives once again moves forward on the next reauthorization of Section 702, that promised fix has been ignored by both houses of Congress for two years.
 
Basic Liberties at Stake
The ability to surveil foreign threats is vital to protecting the homeland and the American people. But PPSA is firm in the conviction that we can have robust surveillance of terrorist and cybersecurity threats without allowing our government to regularly spy on the American people – especially with massive databases supercharged by AI.
For that reason, we ask House leadership to embrace several key reforms.
 
·      First, warrants must be required before Americans’ communications, swept up in NSA’s global trawl, can be accessed by the government.
 
·      Second, the secret FISA courts should be required to rely on qualified amici – civil liberties experts with high-level security clearances – to represent the larger constitutional concerns of the American people in sensitive cases.
 
·      Third, the House should close the “data broker loophole” that allows government agencies to sidestep the Fourth Amendment by buying Americans’ search histories, geolocation histories, and communications from shady, third-party data brokers.
 
·      One more obvious reform is the one already promised: The House must address the “Make Everyone a Spy” provision before reauthorizing Section 702.
 
It is unconscionable that the NSA can conscript vast swaths of American businesses and non-profit organizations that provide ordinary services, such as Wi-Fi, into a domestic spying operation on customers, tenants, and congregants.
 
This ability of the government to spy on media, law firms, political organizations, and religious groups trashes both the First and Fourth Amendments. This is more than a failure in legislative oversight. It is a breach of trust.
 
Just as bad, when combined with other unresolved problems, such as Section 702’s warrantless “backdoor searches,” and the government’s purchase of sensitive personal data by a dozen government agencies, Congress has set the stage for a genuine American surveillance state.
 
Fortunately, the House has no lack of solutions. Bipartisan proposals – from Rep. Andy Biggs’s Protect Liberty and End Warrantless Surveillance Act to the Government Surveillance Reform Act, sponsored by Rep. Warren Davidson and Rep. Zoe Lofgren – contain language that would narrow the ECSP definition.
 
Since Senate leaders did not deliver the ECSP fix earlier in their own chamber, the responsibility now falls squarely on the House. Leadership should not move forward with any intelligence package that ignores this commitment or relies on vague assurances that reforms will come “later,” behind closed doors.
 
Anything less would confirm the worst suspicions of the American people – that when it comes to surveillance, a promised reform is always just one vote away, one that never quite arrives.
 
Click here to tell House Speaker Mike Johnson to drop any attempt at a clean reauthorization of FISA Section 702 that rejects reasonable domestic surveillance reforms.

​“Well, we have to make changes now. Think about this, after January 6th, I was surveilled. All right. During Obama years, they released my tax returns. All right. When I ran a large hospital company, they targeted my company because I was against Hillarycare.

“So, if they can target a large company CEO and a U.S. senator, they can target [all] Americans. We have to have some common-sense changes. Nobody at the FBI has ever been held accountable for the over 200,000 Americans who have been surveilled. Nobody. So, maybe this administration is doing the right thing, but what about the next administration?
​
“So, we have to have some common-sense reforms. We're going to have a couple weeks to start having a real conversation about how we do that. And I'm very optimistic.”

​It was a lot like the Battle of the Alamo – except this time, the defenders won.
 
In the wee hours of Friday morning, a coalition of 20 Republicans and 208 Democrats stopped House leadership from ramming through a reauthorization of FISA Section 702 weighed down by a disingenuous “reform” proposal. That proposal would have expanded the American surveillance state while weakening Americans’ privacy.
 
Worse, it would have punted the next reauthorization five years into the future. A surveillance authority created to track foreign threats – but too often used to conduct warrantless searches of Americans – would not have faced meaningful congressional scrutiny again until 2031.
 
That matters because Section 702 reauthorization is Congress’s only real chance to confront:

• The backdoor inspection of Americans’ private communications without a warrant

 

• The purchase and warrantless use of Americans’ most sensitive digital data from shady third-party brokers

 

• The “make everyone a spy” provision, which allows the NSA to compel access to Americans’ communications from businesses, landlords, and even houses of worship that provide Wi-Fi for their customers, congregants, tenants, and patrons

 
At a time of breakneck technological change – supercharged by AI – a five-year vacation from oversight might as well be a century.
 
Throughout the night, PPSA stayed on offense, providing Members of Congress with clear, fact-driven analysis.

As we pointed out to House Members, the bill’s biggest weakness was its overreach. House leadership tried to sell “reform” while pushing a five-year extension – an overreach that backfired.
 
Members were especially troubled by a Trojan Horse provision dressed up as a “warrant” requirement. In reality, it offered no protection for the vast number of everyday law-abiding Americans whose communications are swept up incidentally in foreign intelligence collection and then searched and reviewed by government agencies without any kind of judicial warrant.
 
Under that language, the FBI could still conduct backdoor searches of Americans’ communications with no evidence of wrongdoing – let alone probable cause.
 
The amendment also ignored the domestic surveillance practices of the NSA, CIA, and National Counterterrorism Center – agencies that collectively conduct thousands of backdoor searches each year. The NSA, in particular, has a long track record of violating the rules governing those searches.
 
Then came the giveaway clause. Buried in the text was a provision stating that “nothing in this subsection shall be construed to limit the authority of the Government under any applicable law or the Constitution …”
 
That’s not reform. That’s a disclaimer.
 
In short, the proposed cure was worse than the disease – especially because it failed to require a warrant before querying Americans’ communications in the Section 702 database.
 
But this fight isn’t over. The House has only kicked the can a few days down the road. The next vote is expected very soon.
 
PPSA will continue to arm Members with the facts – exposing phony reforms and warning against the dangers of locking in five years of largely unchecked surveillance. We’ll also keep you informed as the intelligence community and its allies on Capitol Hill roll out the next round of curveball proposals.
 
The good news: a majority of the House is holding firm for real reform, including a warrant requirement that actually protects Americans.
 
With your support – especially your calls and emails to House Members – PPSA will keep fighting to protect your privacy.

​Did you see The Wall Street Journal editorial Monday morning entitled “Playing National Security Roulette”? The editors argue that anything less than a clean reauthorization of the FISA Section 702 surveillance authority will “put the lives of Americans at risk.”
 
The Journal editors acknowledge that this authority, enacted by Congress to surveil foreign threats abroad, was misused by FBI agents who ran searches on political protesters, political donors, and Members of Congress. “But the intelligence community has since instituted safeguards on how searches must be authorized,” the editors tell us.
 
Thus, according to The Journal, adding any amendments to Section 702 would be a reckless gamble with national security – and reforms are not needed anyway, because the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act (RISAA) fixed all the problematic parts of Section 702.
 
Wrong on both counts.
 
Reforms Would Not Compromise National Security
 
Reformers want to amend the law to make the program consistent with the Fourth Amendment by requiring probable cause warrants before inspecting Americans’ communications.
 
But the warrant requirement being proposed for surveillance of Americans contains very clear exceptions for “exigent circumstances,” such as terrorist threats, as well as exceptions for every single other type of search the administration has claimed is helpful in protecting national security, including defenses against cyberattacks. Not only would these reform proposals allow the FBI to proceed without obtaining a warrant in an emergency, but the Bureau would also have great latitude as to what constitutes an emergency.
 
In short, warrants would be required in cases where the government is conducting a fishing expedition with no nexus to national security – such as an agent searching for the communications of his Tinder date, or searching for the communications of thousands of donors to a congressional campaign – but would not be required in exigent cases with national security implications. 
 
The FBI Continues to Violate the Law
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A FISA Court opinion in March 2025 revealed that the FBI had been systematically violating statutory requirements. In August 2024, DOJ overseers learned that the FBI was operating a “filtering” tool that allowed it to query Section 702 data under the radar. These U.S. person “searches” or queries were not counted, tracked, or audited, nor were they approved by an attorney or supervisor, as required by law.
 
Thus, the actual number of U.S. person queries for 2024 remains unknown and outside of any audits.
 
A new FISA Court opinion found that the systemic violations continue. According to The New York Times and The Washington Post, the FISA Court issued a classified opinion that reportedly reveals that even though DOJ shut down the filtering tool the FBI used in 2024, the FBI has been using another, similar filtering tool to conduct queries without following the requirements of RISAA.
 
Thus, the systemic violations of RISAA are not fixed. They are ongoing.
 
In Summary:
 
The warrant requirement proposals contain sufficient exceptions to counter potential terrorists, cybersecurity attacks, and other threats to the American people. And contrary to The Journal’s assertion that the RISAA “reforms appear to be working,” they are clearly not.
 
One final note – while the reauthorization of the Section 702 statute has an April 20 deadline, FISA Court surveillance orders are in effect through next spring. The House has plenty of time to debate these reform measures. There is no need for the kind of panic The Journal – obviously influenced by intelligence community spin – is fomenting.

​At the eleventh hour – as the House prepares to vote on a “clean” reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which would exclude any reform amendments – a revelation from a secret court has disclosed major compliance problems directly related to Americans’ constitutional rights.

FISA Section 702 is a legal authority that allows U.S. government agencies to surveil foreign targets on foreign soil, but has been used by the government to spy on Americans’ texts, phone calls, and emails. The FBI, CIA, NSA, and National Counterterrorism Center conduct thousands of these warrantless “backdoor” searches each year.

In August 2024, it was revealed that the FBI was using a querying tool that allowed it to access Americans’ communications without adhering to the procedures Congress had just passed in the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act (RISAA). These searches evaded RISAA procedures meant to prevent abuses, such as obtaining approval for backdoor searches from in-house lawyers or supervisors, and recording the reasons for the search for internal audits.
The Department of Justice claimed to have fixed these violations in early 2025 and to have discontinued the use of that querying tool.

Yet a few days ago, the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) found that the violations are in fact ongoing. We cannot be sure of the exact details, since the court’s opinion is classified. The New York Times, however, reported that the use of data-filtering tools to perform queries or searches of Americans’ information is:
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• A problem “across the intelligence community”  

 

• Being conducted by the FBI through “another tool” with the same functionality as the discontinued querying tool.

This should be enough to settle the debate about stiff-arming consideration of more effective reforms. House Members must reject calls for a clean reauthorization and send a clear signal to the intelligence community that Congress will no longer tolerate its shell games.

Nor should House Members be panicked by the phony claim that failure to reauthorize Section 702 will result in America’s security apparatus going dark. While the statute expires on April 20, the FISC’s current surveillance orders remain in effect until spring 2027.

The reform amendments before the House would require warrants before the government can search the communications of Americans, as mandated by the Fourth Amendment. However, they all contain robust exceptions for emergencies, cybersecurity attacks, and metadata.
​
The House should not let itself be stampeded into a rushed vote. We have the time to debate reasonable reforms that will protect Americans from terrorists, while also protecting our constitutional rights from government overreach.

​Yes, you – and us, and everyone else. We may all soon be tracked in the FBI’s proposed database for domestic terrorism. As Ken Klippenstein reports, buried inside the administration’s 2027 budget “is a new FBI-led center dedicated to ‘proactively’ hunting Americans the government classifies as so-called domestic terrorists.”

It’ll be a busy place, by the looks of it, operating as a joint mission center where 10 federal agencies watch out for any hint of the following beliefs:

·      anti-Americanism
·      anti-capitalism
·      anti-Christianity
·      support for the overthrow of the U.S. government
·      extremism on migration
·      extremism on race
·      extremism on gender
·      hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family
·      hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion
·      hostility towards those who hold traditional views on morality

With the exception of overthrowing the government, this is a highly subjective list, capable of being interpreted (or added to) as any current or future administration of any stripe sees fit. It could include any atheist or agnostic, any supporter of Bernie Sanders, anyone who has leftward views on gender and the family. These standards, of course, could be inverted by the next administration to make suspects out of people who are critical of progressive policies, restrictive gun laws, or big government.

Today, we target atheists. Tomorrow, the FBI could once again target “radical traditional Catholics.”

The free speech implications alone are beyond chilling, but as a privacy matter, it’s draconian. It blurs the distinction between George Orwell’s “thoughtcrime” and actual terrorism. And to work, it must rely on artificial intelligence crunching vast amounts of social media data in ways that reduce the Fourth Amendment to an afterthought.

No less concerning, when this database is paired with the personal data these same federal agencies obtain by purchasing Americans’ digital records from third-party data brokers, you can see all the elements of a total surveillance state falling into place.
​
It is hard to imagine that such broad categories can yield meaningful intelligence about real terrorists. But it may be just enough for the government to build a dossier on you.

​“Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”

That was the question Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) put to then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in an open hearing in 2013.

“No sir,” Director Clapper responded, then qualified his statement by saying, “not wittingly.”
It has since been proven – and is a matter of government record – that the NSA’s global trawl of data has pulled in the communications of Americans by the millions over the last five years. Quite a record for a surveillance authority enacted by Congress to surveil foreign targets on foreign soil.

See for yourself the misuse of this authority revealed in a rare public scolding of the FBI by the secret FISA Court over “widespread violations” of Americans’ privacy with Section 702 data. Or look at the revelations issued by that court of specific instances of how the FBI misused warrantless Section 702 material against U.S. political figures. It is widely reported that the FBI has freely helped itself to Section 702 data, searching the data of more than 19,000 congressional donors, a state judge, and Members of Congress.

The Hunter Biden Laptop Deceit

In 2016, former Director Clapper was joined by former CIA Director John Brennan, former NSA General Counsel Glenn Gerstell, and former NSA Deputy Director Richard Ledgett, along with almost 50 other former senior intelligence officials in signing a letter released just before the 2020 election. They chimed in on a New York Post story about the contents of a laptop owned by Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.

This time, the Fibbing Four solemnly told the American people that the contents of the Hunter Biden laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian intelligence operation.” The FBI later determined that the emails and contents of the laptop were “not tampered with or manipulated.” Even The New York Times was forced to report that the laptop and its contents were genuine.

The irony is that former intelligence officials, abusing their continued access to classified information to skew a national election, is about the most Russian thing they could do.

Misinformation About Reform Legislation

Now Director Clapper, and his Hunter Biden colleagues Brennan, Gerstell, and Ledgett, have fired off another letter. This one is directed at Congress telling Members not to allow any reform amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authority, Section 702, because that would degrade the government’s ability to protect Americans.

“If Congress fails to authorize Section 702, history may judge the lapse of Section 702 authorities as one of the worst intelligence failures of our time,” they write, joined by enough of their colleagues to get the number of signatories up to around 50. “As Members of Congress know, we face sophisticated threats from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, including the real possibility of devastating cyber-attacks and state-sponsored terrorism directed at Americans.”

These are, of course, real and active threats. But the Fibbing Four gloss over the fact that all of the reform proposals being proposed in Congress contain exceptions for “exigent circumstances.” These exceptions would allow intelligence agencies to react to time-sensitive emergencies, such as the so-called “ticking time bomb” scenario. These reform proposals also contain exceptions for cybersecurity and warrantless searches of metadata, requiring court approval only to examine the content of Americans’ communications.

Fool Me Once…

The good news is that Congress is getting wise to such shenanigans just before every vote. Before the last Section 702 reauthorization two years ago, the champions of the intelligence community put out a cryptic story about “a serious national security threat” that turned out to be theoretical, not imminent, reports about “Russian space nukes.”

Our advice to Congress is to look at the plain language of the reform legislation that allows the intelligence community to continue to defend America – while upholding our constitutional rights as well.
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We can defend America and obey the Constitution at the same time. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Bob Goodlatte, our senior policy analyst, who also represented Virginia’s 6th District in Congress and chaired the House Judiciary Committee, published an op-ed in the Washington Times. 

The debate over the FISA Section 702 surveillance authority is often framed as a clash between national security and privacy. But that framing is flawed – and dangerously so.

What Congress now faces is not just a Fourth Amendment question. It is a test of whether warrantless surveillance powers could quietly erode gun rights.
​
A “clean” reauthorization of Section 702 – one that excludes meaningful reforms – is an implicit threat to the Second Amendment.

​The American Prospect reports that statements made by Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), Ranking Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, are raising the question of how well Members of Congress understand the surveillance authorities they oversee.

​“I am not aware of any NSA purchases of U.S. person data,” Rep. Himes is quoted as saying in a virtual town hall last week. “And because their targets, by law, are exclusively foreign, they … have no reason and no business buying American data.”

​
​We agree with the last part of that statement. If only the first part were true.
 
In a letter sent in 2023 in response to a query from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), then-NSA Director Gen. Paul Nakasone wrote: “NSA acquires various types of CAI (commercially available information) for foreign intelligence, cybersecurity, and other authorized mission purposes, to include enhancing its signals intelligence (SIGINT) and cybersecurity missions. This may include information associated with electronic devices being
used outside and, in certain cases, inside the United States.”
 
Charlie Savage of The New York Times summarized the letter’s content thusly, “The National Security Agency buys certain logs related to Americans’ domestic internet activities from commercial data brokers.” This characterization was under the headline, “N.S.A. Buys Americans’ Internet Data Without Warrants, Letter Says.”
 
Rep. Himes also said that AI “has absolutely nothing to do with 702. Nothing. Full stop.”
 
The American Prospect reports that the Department of Justice’s National Security Division (NSD) budget justification shows that NSD “worked closely” with the intelligence community “to discuss new AI tools that are involved in processing or analyzing FISA-acquired information.”
 
All of which suggests that before the House debates the reauthorization of FISA Section 702 – a program that authorizes foreign surveillance on foreign soil but has often been used to warrantlessly spy on Americans on U.S soil – a deeper discussion with civil liberties groups and a robust House debate are warranted.
 
In facing the looming Section 702 debate, Members of the House need to hear from all sides of the surveillance debate – not just the approved line from the executive branch intelligence agencies.

​As Congress prepares to debate the reauthorization of FISA Section 702, lawmakers should understand one simple fact: Americans do not trust the government with their data. A new poll shows that 74 percent of Americans are concerned about the privacy and security of their personal data in government hands.
 
The poll, released last week by the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), shows that 79 percent of respondents agreed that: “Congress should use its authority to hold the government accountable when it ignores privacy laws.”
 
“People want their privacy protected,” said CDT’s Elizabeth Laird, “and bipartisan majorities want their elected leaders to do something about it. Lawmakers who ignore privacy are significantly out of step with their constituents.”
 
The high level of public concern about the warrantless access by government agencies to Americans’ data – at the heart of the Section 702 debate – was consistent regardless of respondents’ political affiliation or age group. The survey also revealed specific concerns about how that data is used – and misused:
 
68 percent are concerned about personal data being shared with law enforcement across the federal, state, and local levels
 
67 percent are concerned about personal data being shared with the Department of Homeland Security
 
83 percent are concerned about a breach of a government database exposing their personal data
 
73 percent agree that, without privacy laws, government agencies would track and monitor anyone they choose
 
44 percent say they would forgo government benefits rather than risk misuse of their personal data
 
These numbers are a warning. Poll after poll has shown that Americans across the political spectrum are deeply uneasy about how the government collects, searches, and uses their data. That concern is especially acute when it comes to warrantless searches of Americans’ communications under Section 702 – so-called “backdoor searches” that bypass the Fourth Amendment.
 
Nor are these fears hypothetical. From millions of warrantless queries in recent years to the government’s routine purchase of Americans’ data from brokers, the gap between surveillance authorities and constitutional protections has become impossible to ignore. If “trust is the lifeblood of democracy,” then these findings suggest that America is running dangerously low.
 
Congress now faces a choice. It can once again rush through a “clean” reauthorization of Section 702, ignoring both public opinion and constitutional concerns. Or it can act – by requiring warrants for searches of Americans’ communications, closing the data broker loophole, and imposing real oversight.
 
Fortunately, the path forward is clear:
 
—Reform Section 702.
 
—Restore the warrant requirement.
 
—Rebuild public trust.

Reading the private communications of Americans – without showing evidence of wrongdoing to obtain a warrant from a judge – violates the Constitution, disrespects American values, and opens the door to abuse.

Yet Congress is once again caught up in a debate over the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), with some claiming that a warrant rule would endanger lives and national security.

The Center for Democracy and Technology and PPSA teamed up to brief Congress on the realities and actual numbers behind these claims about the examination of “U.S. person” queries – searches of people in America whose texts, emails, and calls get caught up in the National Security Agency’s global trawl of data.

Here are some of the myth-exploding facts from our brief.

MYTH #1: U.S. person queries are immensely important in a broad array of situations, making it dangerous to place restrictions on this important tool.

REALITY: Queries only provide value in a limited set of situations – and the proposed warrant rules provide exceptions to account for all of them.

Testimony from the intelligence community, the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, and the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board uncovered only a few distinct scenarios in which U.S. person queries provided value. And the proposed warrant rule includes exceptions to the warrant requirement that account for them.

These exceptions include tracking the signatures of cyber threats, gaining consent from Americans targeted for foreign assassination and kidnapping plots, and tracking Americans’ contacts with suspicious foreign contacts. The government has yet to produce a single instance in which a warrant requirement would have impeded such efforts. Even then, the exceptions in reform proposals allow warrantless inspection of metadata – who contacted whom – leaving the government free to track Americans who are communicating with terrorists or foreign spies.

MYTH #2: U.S. person queries need to be done quickly and efficiently in the case of a “ticking time bomb,” and a warrant rule would slow the process down in a manner that endangers Americans’ lives.

REALITY: The government has never shown that queries provide such time-sensitive responses. But if they are needed, and the clock is ticking, once again the reform proposals include exceptions for such “exigent circumstances” scenarios.

In short, the exigent circumstances, cybersecurity, consent, and metadata exceptions to the proposed warrant requirement allow the government to respond to threats quickly.

MYTH #3: Warrants are not feasible given the scale of U.S. person queries – adding a warrant requirement would overwhelm intelligence agencies and the courts.

REALITY: By permitting warrantless metadata queries – such as communications logs – the warrant rule ensures that the government will not need to go to court frequently.

In 2023, the most recent year for which data is available, the FBI conducted queries for over 57,000 unique U.S. person terms, an unacceptable degree of government overreach and fishing expeditions.

Only 1.58 percent of the FBI’s U.S. person queries resulted in FBI agents accessing the content of communications. Thus, even if queries continued to be conducted at the prior rate of 57,000 annually – which is unlikely given that many of these queries were improper or overly broad – a warrant would be potentially applicable to less than 1,000 queries a year.

That’s less than three such queries per day on average, hardly an insuperable burden on the FBI and the courts.

Because the proposed warrant rule would permit warrantless metadata queries – only requiring court approval to access the content of messages – agencies would be able to confirm when a query will yield a “hit” before devoting any time and effort to seeking a warrant.

And most of those two to three queries per day would fall under the exceptions to the warrant requirement.

Our brief to Congress concludes:

“Americans’ basic rights should not be secondary to bureaucratic hurdles and staffing limits. The exceptions and exemptions built into the warrant proposal would allow the government to remain within the boundaries of the Constitution while also having the means to protect national security.”

​As the April 20 expiration of FISA Section 702 approaches, a familiar script is playing out on Capitol Hill. Members are warned that any delay in reauthorizing Section 702 – which enables U.S. intelligence agencies to surveil foreign threats – risks allowing a terrorist attack to unfold on American soil.

This “you will have blood on your hands” argument is not just wrong. It is a cynical ploy to short-circuit a debate that Congress owes the American people, one that would in no way endanger national security.

Here is the reality: Letting the statutory authority of Section 702 lapse does NOT mean America’s surveillance goes dark. Surveillance continues under Section 702 certifications issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which remain valid until their expiration – currently extending to March 2027.

This is not speculation. It is how this law works. As The New York Times has reported, legal directives to communications providers “shall continue in effect” under existing court authorizations.

Yet lawmakers are again being told by the intelligence community to act immediately or risk catastrophe. This fear-based messaging has become routine, repeatedly stampeding Congress into reauthorizing Section 702 without strong reforms to protect Americans’ privacy.

Enacted by Congress to target foreign threats abroad, Section 702 has been used to conduct millions of warrantless searches of Americans’ communications – peaking at 3.4 million in 2021. These are the predictable results of allowing the government to conduct “backdoor searches” without a warrant.

In 2024, a bipartisan amendment to require warrants for searches of Americans’ communications failed in a 212–212 tie in the House. That vote showed how close meaningful reform is – if lawmakers are given the time to pursue it.

Supporters of a “clean” extension – one without any reform amendments – are once again promising a debate on reforms later. Such promised reform debates never arrive. Recent history gives no reason to believe that this time will be different.

Congress has time to debate well beyond April 20. It has time to patiently consider reforms, such as adding a warrant requirement before 702-derived communications of Americans can be inspected.
​
The choice for Congress is not between national security and civil liberties. It is between rubber-stamping a flawed surveillance authority and doing the hard work of fixing it for their constituents.

“Zero crash fatalities” was the way some advocates touted the vehicle safety mandates authorized by the infrastructure package that Joe Biden signed in 2021. As admirable as such goals sound, the mandates are an ill-conceived, undefined approach that, from a privacy standpoint, has more holes in them than a cocktail strainer.

Now, three years past its original deadline, the NHTSA is barreling ahead with a model-year 2027 implementation while still not having posted a draft rule. The possible design architecture is a nightmare – including AI-powered infrared cameras that actively monitor biometrics (e.g., pupil dilation) to determine whether a driver is “impaired.”

“Your car simply watches and decides whether you’re fit to drive,” Gadget Review contributor C. Da Costa writes – “Think Minority Report, but for your morning commute.”

Unlike drunk driving laws that already exist and work, warns Lauren Fix, the vagueness of these mandates takes them beyond traditional constitutional safeguards:

“No breath test is required. No police officer is involved. The judgment is made by software. Once flagged, the vehicle can refuse to start or restrict operation – and here is the critical issue: there are no federal rules defining how a driver gets out of that lockout. No required appeal process. No mandated reset timeline. No human review. Drivers are placed into what critics now call ‘kill switch jail,’ with no clear exit. This is not targeted enforcement. It applies to every driver, every time, regardless of driving history.”

“Advanced impaired driving prevention technology” (in the words of the original mandate) seems unlikely to work as advertised. Instead of saving perhaps 10,000 lives annually, it will merely make already too-expensive vehicles even more expensive as reluctant manufacturers pass these costs on to consumers.
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From a privacy standpoint, it will create a massive public-private database of biometric data that will be the envy of government agents and hackers alike. In doing so, it will permanently end one of the few remaining bastions of American personal freedom, and one that is already under serious threat – the privacy we enjoy behind the wheel.

​404 Media just uncovered something that should unsettle anyone who uses Zoom: An AI-powered site called WebinarTV is using third-party apps to access online meetings and record them, with meeting presenters repackaged and marketed as “experts” in public-facing webinars.
 
If they're lucky, these unwitting experts – who gain nothing from their newfound notoriety and, indeed, rightly thought they were mere participants in an invited Zoom call – might receive an AI-generated email from an AI-generated agent at AI-based WebinarTV announcing the surprise “rebranding” of their Zoom meeting participation, and perhaps providing the means to opt out. All of this, of course, is after the fact, so it's a privacy-last approach (not to mention that such notifications are probably being routed to spam).
 
For privacy-first users, it's yet another lesson in the ever-growing lecture titled “Pay Attention to Those Settings!” To wit, when informed by 404, Zoom did a review and found that WebinarTV is accessing meeting links that have been publicly shared. That’s the key weakness: Various browser extensions and other digital tools make it possible to record and edit such publicly accessible meetings – even if the meetings themselves aren't being recorded.
 
Using third-party tools (and perhaps their own) WebinarTV is capturing a meeting's audio and video in real time. “Third-party screen recording” is how a Zoom spokesperson described it to 404, while also suggesting that the company was technically powerless to stop it.
 
So it’s up to us for the time being. Consider taking the following steps to avoid getting “webinarred” (or “Zoomjacked”?):
 

1. Review the privacy settings for your Zoom meetings and be as strict as your situation allows. Yes, it’s mildly inconvenient, but the price of convenience in the digital age is rarely worth it.
   
   
2. Publicly posting meeting links (or sharing those links indiscriminately) is asking for trouble. You can still invite a large number of people to your Zoom call, but work with your tech advisors to make joining the soiree a matter of jumping through some simple, common-sense privacy hoops (like manually admitting attendees – a perfect job for work/study interns, by the way).
   
   
3. Require meeting attendees to register – and why wouldn’t you want to do that, anyway?
   ​
   
4. Display a watermark to indicate copyrighted or private content. Tell WebinarTV and its ilk: “We’re on to you and we’re not going to make this easy.”

 
The CEO of WebinarTV told 404 that because the meeting links were publicly accessible, attendees shouldn't have any expectation of privacy. Hence, his company is justified in its actions and isn't guilty of any violations.

Our recommendation? See items 1 through 4 above and don't give WebinarTV the satisfaction. In the meantime, and at this rate, caveat emptor.
 
If you want a deeper dive into WebinarTV’s shenanigans, CyberAlberta details the steps.

Oxymorons abound in our culture – from eating your “12-ounce poundcake” with “plastic silverware,” to the favorite of spin meisters in this age of Epstein disclosures – “old news.”

Count among them the “administrative subpoena” – a perversion of a judicial process at the hands of the executive branch. A subpoena is typically issued by the clerk of a court in the name of the presiding judge, usually seeking the production of documents or other evidence relevant to a case. It can also command a person to appear in court as a witness.

This is all in keeping with the Fourth Amendment, which requires judicial review of a search or seizure. Not so with administrative subpoenas, which are executive branch demands for documents with no judicial review whatsoever.

Once used sparingly, reliance on administrative subpoenas has exploded since 9/11. They can be deployed not only in serious investigations, but out of curiosity or pique by a government agent. For example, Brent Skorup at the Cato Institute recounts how a Pennsylvania man learned that an administrative subpoena was issued to Google for his computer metadata. What triggered such suspicion? He had emailed a prosecutor urging him not to deport an Afghan immigrant whose plight he had seen in the news.

Skorup tracks today’s use of administrative subpoenas as legal “innovations” – coercive, unilateral, and operating absent judicial review –all of which makes them unlike a probable cause warrant or even a subpoena issued under the lax standards of a grand jury. The difference between types of subpoenas, little understood by most Americans, is quite stark, as Skorup notes:

“Unlike the grand jury, administrative subpoenas are not anchored in the Constitution or historical practice. Administrative subpoenas are creatures of statute and regulation. Although they trace back to the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, they were once used sparingly – 19th-century courts held that documents were protected through self-incrimination safeguards – and largely against corporations.”

Without judicial oversight, however, administrative subpoenas can now function as tools of warrantless data collection. As PPSA General Counsel Gene Schaerr said, administrative subpoenas “may be likened to a fishing expedition, with Americans as the fish.”

During the first Trump administration, the U.S. Department of Justice issued secret subpoenas to telecoms to produce the phone records of two House Members, 43 congressional aides in both parties, and major news organizations in a leak investigation. Not to be outdone, the Biden-appointed special prosecutor Jack Smith subpoenaed telecoms for the phone records of 20 current or former Members of Congress.

This practice is a convenient, surreptitious way for government employees to bypass due process and perform general searches of Americans’ personal records. Were Elton John writing a song to describe what’s really going on, the lyrics would start with, “Goodbye, probable cause.”

This quiet erosion of a core constitutional safeguard is ripe for review by the U.S. Supreme Court. Only the High Court can recognize this oxymoron for what it is – and restore the constitutional clarity it obscures.

Why does PPSA oppose a “clean” extension – without any changes or reforms – of the scandal-ridden Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)? Recent history shows how much is at stake when the U.S. House votes in April on whether to reauthorize this surveillance authority, and why Congress must allow time for significant debate and reforms.

Section 702 was enacted by Congress to enable U.S. intelligence agencies to surveil foreign threats on foreign soil. The intelligence community maintains that the communications of Americans are swept up in the National Security Agency’s global trawl only “incidentally.”

Patrick Eddington, a former CIA officer now a Cato Institute policy analyst, writes that the rub is that “the practice is not incidental but a predictable, systematic, and – from the government’s perspective – valuable byproduct of the program.”

Here are some examples of what “incidental” looks like:

• The FBI in 2021 conducted more than 3 million warrantless searches of Americans’ communications under Section 702. This was an astonishing abuse of a surveillance power that Congress designed for foreign surveillance, not warrantless surveillance of Americans.

 

• The FBI, in violation of its own rules, illegally searched for the communications of 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign, of multiple U.S. government officials, of journalists, of political commentators, of a local political party, of people who came to the FBI to perform repairs, of victims who approached the FBI to report crimes, of business, religious, and community leaders who applied to participate in the FBI’s “Citizens Academy,” of college students participating in a “Collegiate Academy,” of police officer candidates, of colleagues and relatives of FBI agents, and of Black Lives Matter and January 6 protesters.

 

• Some of the most egregious improper queries occurred after the FBI implemented new rules to curb abuses. In April 2023, a FISC opinion revealed that the FBI in 2022 dipped into Section 702 data to warrantlessly spy on a U.S. Senator, a state senator, and a state judge.

 

• Just last week, the FBI admitted that it has resumed collecting Americans’ location data and movements – where we go and potentially those we meet with – by purchasing that data from third-party data brokers. Though this is not a Section 702-authorized program, it is a clear sign of the hunger the government has for collecting our data without a warrant.

Three evils emerge from what has become a routine domestic surveillance program.

• The first evil is that warrantless surveillance of Americans – which completely sidesteps the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment requirement for a probable cause warrant – gives the FBI a “backdoor search” loophole. By conducting fishing expeditions, the FBI can develop predicates for investigating Americans outside of constitutional boundaries.

The intelligence community objects to this characterization, stoutly maintaining that Section 702 is not directed at Americans. To quote Eddington again:

“The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) and multiple congressional oversight reports have documented thousands of such searches annually, many involving wholly domestic criminal investigations with no foreign intelligence nexus.”

• The second evil is where this data can go. Once Americans’ data is collected by surveillance programs authorized by Section 702, it can be held for years. With a recent move by the Trump administration to tear down long-standing data silos between the agencies, this information could soon be at the fingertips of dozens of federal agencies, including the IRS, the Department of Homeland Security, and the ATF.

 

• The third evil is the ability of AI to quickly turn vast amounts of data from domestic surveillance into actionable intelligence against Americans.

PPSA agrees that Section 702 is an important authority, needed to keep Americans safe from foreign threats. We also believe that we can protect civil liberties and national security at the same time. There is no reason for Members of Congress to be panicked by a needless legislative game of chicken.
​
Defenders of civil liberties should stand together to test the value of various reform amendments in the crucible of a much-needed open debate.

​Researchers at Rice University have worked out how to camouflage your heartbeats from unwanted surveillance with “biometric decoys.” Wait, what? Excuse me, you ask, why might I soon want to camouflage my heartbeat?

Remote heart rate monitoring is just one of many threats to privacy emerging from the mushrooming field of biometric tracking. This common, everyday technology ranges from radar-based imaging used for facial authentication to wearables that monitor signals like heart rate variability, respiration, temperature, steps, calories ingested, and the quality of your sleep cycles. Biometric tracking is designed to make everyday life safer and easier, telling you how much of your last night was spent in deep, light, and REM sleep, or whether your heartbeat is showing signs of arrhythmia.

In today’s world, however, no good data feed goes unexploited. Off-the-shelf devices such as millimeter-wave radars can be used to eavesdrop on phone conversations and monitor daily movement patterns. They can also be used to monitor subtler signals like breathing and heart rate to gauge your stress, activity, or emotional state.

“Sensing technologies are becoming higher resolution and more pervasive, and concerns around what that means for privacy should be taken seriously,” said Edward Knightly, the senior researcher on the study. “It is important to explore potential vulnerabilities and think about how we might address them.”
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Despite the benefits of biometric monitoring, as with almost all new technologies it comes with a privacy downside. Without policy or legal guardrails, employers might soon monitor your heart rate as soon as you log into your work computer. Or imagine how a negotiator might exploit the knowledge that the person on the other side of the table had a terrible night’s sleep.

The complete study was published in the journal Computer Communications via ScienceDirect. And none too soon, given that the market for biometric systems (and their highly desirable data) is expected to roughly double between now and 2030. So it is not too early to worry about such things – as technology can change in a heartbeat.

We usually think of the government’s domestic surveillance abuses as violations of the Fourth Amendment protections against warrantless searches. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was enacted to monitor foreign threats on foreign soil. In practice, however, it has been used by the FBI to sweep up the communications of millions of Americans on American soil and to specifically surveil thousands of Americans – all without warrant.

Now, with a House vote looming in April, Congress is considering a “clean” reauthorization – one that stiff-arms debate over amendments that would impose basic guardrails on warrantless surveillance of Americans.

What is obvious – but just as alarming – is that a “clean” reauthorization could also threaten Americans’ Second Amendment rights.

Congress has long prohibited the creation of a federal registry of American gun owners. Yet, as Cato Institute scholar Patrick Eddington explains, Section 702 might offer the government a workaround of the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986 “at a level of commercial granularity that a formal registry might never achieve.”

How? Many handguns, rifles, and much of the ammunition sold in the United States are manufactured abroad. These foreign manufacturers are caught in the NSA’s global trawl as they communicate with their U.S. operations about everything from inventory management to purchase orders.

Eddington writes on the Cato Institute Blog:

“When Americans buy a Glock pistol, a Beretta shotgun, or a box of Czech-made Sellier & Bellot ammunition at their local gun store, they likely assume the transaction is between them, the dealer, and perhaps the ATF’s background check system. What they almost certainly don’t know is that the business communications underpinning that entire supply chain – every email, phone call, and text between U.S. importers and their foreign suppliers – is almost certainly being vacuumed up and stored under the Section 702 database.”

Layer onto this the current administration’s push to break down long-standing agency data silos under Executive Order 14243. It takes little imagination to see how the FBI, ATF, or the Department of Homeland Security might do exactly what Congress forbids – create a registry of Americans who own firearms. Add artificial intelligence, and the creation of such a registry goes from possible to easy.

Worse, Section 702 data is retained for years. Even if the current administration does not exploit this capability, it could become a very useful tool for the next administration.

Section 702 thus arms the government with the means to violate not only the Fourth Amendment, but the Second – and even the First. The ability to track what people say, where they go, and whom they associate with opens the door to mapping political, religious, and social networks – core First Amendment activities.

More abuses may soon come to light. By April 10, the administration must produce documents in response to a Cato Freedom of Information Act request detailing instances of noncompliance with the law by federal agencies over the last two years.
​
Section 702 has been too prone to scandalous violations of Americans’ rights to give it a green light with no reforms. For the sake of our First, Second, and Fourth Amendment rights, this surveillance authority must be open to debate and reforms.

After the end of the pandemic, retail theft became rampant in New York City, as it did in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and elsewhere.

Retail theft has evolved into a multibillion-dollar industry for highly organized criminal gangs. Last year, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz charged a theft ring with hitting Home Depot outlets up to four times a day, only taking breaks from larceny for team lunches. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said that the state, after toughening laws and putting money behind enforcement, had driven down retail theft crimes in New York City and the state with double-digit reductions.

Yet retail theft continues to eat away at the profits of stores, from big chains to mom-and-pop shops. It is understandable that businesses would turn to biometric identifiers to spot serial offenders and block them before they can enter a store.

But there is a cost to such surveillance – one that we all pay.

“Many of us know the feeling of discovering our credit card information has been stolen,” said New York Councilmember Shahana Hanif. “It’s invasive and frightening, but you can cancel a credit card and get a new one. You cannot cancel your face. You cannot cancel your iris.”

Hanif is sponsoring legislation that would prohibit biometric identifying technology in “public accommodation” spaces such as concerts and grocery stores. (Hat tip to Liam Quigley of Gothamist.)

The city already requires stores to post notice to customers that they collect biometric data. Is this a simple case of caveat emptor? Or is the better question: should we give up our privacy just to buy groceries?

There is more at stake than just what store managers see. It is what happens to this biometric data after it is collected. Hanif’s legislation would stop businesses from selling, leasing, or trading biometric data for profit. It would also require written consent from customers who wish to share their data, including in stores where biometrics are accepted for payment.
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At the very least, protecting our biometric data – and blocking its sale to other businesses, as well as preventing it from being sold or given to government agencies – would be a reasonable guardrail for New York City and other municipalities to adopt.

Talk of a “clean reauthorization” of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is growing on Capitol Hill. But as Washington starts to dream of an easy vote that includes no surveillance reforms, the American people are not having it.
 
FISA Section 702 is an authority enacted by Congress to enable the surveillance of foreign threats on foreign soil, but it has often been used by the FBI in recent years to spy on the communications of millions of Americans. Included in that debate is concern over the way in which a dozen federal agencies – ranging from the FBI to the IRS – are purchasing Americans’ personal information from shady third-party data brokers.
 
A new poll commissioned by Demand Progress shows that Americans are paying attention to this threat to privacy – and they don’t like what they see.

• Only 12 percent of voters, including 17 percent of Republicans and eight percent of Independents, believe Congress should renew surveillance and monitoring activities without reforms.

 

• Some 37 percent of voters, including a plurality of 41 percent of Republicans, think FISA should only be reauthorized if it contains restrictions on government purchases of our personal data.

 

• Another 37 percent don’t want the program reauthorized at all.

The poll also shows that the recent dust-up between the Pentagon and AI company Anthropic is focusing the public’s attention on the potential for the government to use artificial intelligence to drive the surveillance of the American people to unprecedented levels.
 
This is especially true as the administration works to dismantle long-standing information silos and remove safeguards that once limited the sharing of Americans’ private data between agencies – from the Department of Homeland Security to the FBI and the IRS.
 
AI surveillance, with data collected under Section 702, could allow government employees across the federal bureaucracy to run warrantless searches of Americans’ private communications. Combined with the vast amounts of Americans’ personal data that federal agencies purchase from third-party data brokers, AI-run surveillance programs will have truly frightening reach.
 
The poll also shows that Americans are watching the AI debate and that a majority see it as a threat to privacy.
​

• Sixty-six percent of voters – including 76 percent of Independents and 52 percent of Republicans – believe the government should not be able to force AI companies to grant unrestricted access to analyze Americans’ personal data.

Before Congress embraces a comfortable conformity on a “clean” reauthorization of Section 702 or any other surveillance authority, Members would do well to pay attention to the rising alarm over surveillance among their constituents.

The Government Surveillance Reform Act (GSRA), which would stop federal agencies from buying Americans’ most personal data from shady data brokers while reforming Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), was reintroduced on Thursday with strong bipartisan and bicameral support.

Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Reps. Warren Davidson (R-OH) and Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) are the sponsors of the GSRA, which balances comprehensive surveillance reform with national security.

“It leaves in place the authorities needed to protect the American people from foreign threats, while reforming what Senator Lee calls ‘illegal government spying’ directed at Americans,” said Bob Goodlatte, former Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and now Senior Policy Advisor to PPSA.

Cosponsors of the bill include Sens. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Reps. Sara Jacobs (D-CA) and Pramila Jayapal (D-WA).

Among its many reforms, the GRSA:

Closes the backdoor search loophole: By requiring a warrant for the government to inspect Section 702 information, the bill stops federal agents from fishing through warrantlessly obtained data to generate suspicions about Americans.

Ends reverses targeting: It prohibits the use of foreign surveillance as a pretext to gather data on Americans.

Closes the data broker loophole: The bill bans the practice of federal agencies buying some of our most personal information from data brokers without a warrant.

Repeals the “Make Everyone a Spy” provision: The bill repeals a controversial 2024 provision that allows the government to force millions of Americans and companies to secretly spy on its behalf.

Updates privacy protections for AI and other modern technologies: The bill’s warrant requirement extends to Americans’ location information, web browsing data, search and chatbot records, and the wealth of data collected by modern vehicles.

Expands the use of amici in the secret FISA courts: The bill mandates increased use of amici curiae – experts in privacy and civil liberties – to represent the civil rights of the American people in sensitive cases before secret courts that have no adversarial process. It also provides these advisors to the court with full access to all relevant information needed to do their job.

“It has been said that the Government Surveillance Reform Act is the most balanced and comprehensive surveillance reform bill in almost half a century,” Bob Goodlatte said. “It enjoys deep bipartisan and bicameral support because many Members of Congress are alarmed by the abusive and pervasive surveillance of the American people.
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“This well-crafted legislation must be included in the reauthorization of FISA Section 702 in April.”