SCORECARD: Second Session of 118th Congress –Surveillance Reform Gains Momentum

In 2024, champions of surveillance reform in the House passed the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act – which would force government agencies to obtain probable cause warrants before collecting Americans’ most sensitive and personal data scraped from apps and sold by data brokers.
 
House passage of this measure creates powerful momentum for this major surveillance reform, in the next Congress if not in this one.
 
Congress also imposed strong reporting and accountability measures on the FBI.
 
The Bureau must now report the number of times it searches, or “queries,” the communications of Americans in FISA Section 702 databases. This reform amendment also allows the leaders of both Houses of Congress and the House and Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Committees to attend hearings of the secret FISA Court – something Jim Jordan, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, (R-OH) and Ranking Member Jerry Nadler, (D-NY), are publicly planning to do.
 
Congress did reauthorize Section 702, the foreign intelligence surveillance authority, without requiring warrants to examine queries of the communications of Americans caught up in this global data trawl. Even here, however, there were bright spots. The advocates of the intelligence community avoided a warrant requirement for surveillance of Americans by the narrowest margin – the breaking of a tie vote. And champions of reform succeeded in moving the next reauthorization of Section 702 from five years to two years.
 
As a result of this close vote and narrow window, debate is already well underway on ways to improve Section 702.
 
On the negative side, House Intelligence Committee leaders managed to insert into Section 702 reauthorization a measure we called “Make Everyone a Spy” – now law – that requires many businesses with internet-related communications equipment to allow warrantless inspection of customer data. At this writing, efforts are underway to narrow this provision.

Champions of Reform

Throughout this year, many Members stepped forward to take a strong, bold stance for surveillance reform. These include:

• House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, (R-OH) and Ranking Member Jerry Nadler, (D-NY) for shepherding strong legislation through the House Judiciary Committee and for their forceful advocacy for privacy rights.

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• Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH), who headed the successful effort to pass the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act through the House.

 

• Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), who succeeded in adding the regular reporting requirements on Section 702 inquiries by the FBI.

 

• Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), who stood tall in the House for adding warrants to Section 702 queries and came within one vote of winning.  

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• Rep. Ben Cline (R-VA), who succeeded in ending collection of surveillance of third-party mentions, or “abouts” information.

Other prominent and diligent House surveillance reformers include:
   

• Rep. Sara Jacobs, (D-CA)

 

• Rep. Tom Massie (R-KT)

 

• Rep. Darrell Issa, (R-CA)

• Rep. Zoe Lofgren, (D-CA)
  

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In the Senate:

• Sen. Dick Durbin, (D-IL) Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, stood up for warrants for Americans’ private communications.

 

• In this effort Chairman Durbin had the strong, bipartisan support of Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR).

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• Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) was a strong advocate for the Senate passage of the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act.

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