The battle to rein in the surveillance state's most abused and expansive tool is coming to a head this week.

Title VII of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which includes the warrantless surveillance authority known as Section 702, will expire on April 20th if Congress does not renew it. Section 702 was enacted in 2008 to broaden the scope of FISA, legalizing the government's interception of communications of non-U.S. persons who are located abroad.

Even if the authority lapses, FISA surveillance is certified to continue into next year, so Congress has ample time to consider and pass meaningful reforms without succumbing to pressure from national security hawks. Congress should feel pressure from the 76% of Americans that want Congress to stop warrantless searches and the 80% that want Congress to close the data broker loophole.

We need you to contact your members of Congress to urge them to vote NO on a clean reauthorization of Section 702 without reform and to vote YES on meaningful Fourth-Amendment protecting warrant reforms.

Write to your lawmakers using our campaign here and call their offices by dialing 202-953-1892. Your call will be routed directly to the offices of your Representative and Senators.

The Backdoor Search Loophole

In the process of surveilling foreign targets under Section 702, the NSA "incidentally" vacuums up vast troves of Americans' private text messages, emails, and other sensitive communications. The FBI, CIA, and other intelligence agencies have long abused their access to 702 data via "backdoor searches" to access the communications of protesters, political campaign donors, U.S. government officials, journalists, and others without a warrant. In 2021, the FBI alone conducted 3.4 million warrantless searches of Americans' communications through FISA's Section 702. In 2022, the government reported to the FISA Court that the FBI has misused FISA 278,000 times to spy on American citizens. Despite the "reforms" passed in 2024's reauthorization, abuses continue with even less transparency and oversight.

A federal court ruled last year that certain warrantless backdoor searches of Americans' communications are unconstitutional. We need a warrant requirement signed into law that protects our private communications from the government's prying eyes.

The Data Broker Loophole

Data brokers are companies that collect, aggregate, and sell large amounts of personal information about individuals, including location history, browsing activity, app usage, and other digital behavior. The government is a high-paying customer of this commercial data - information they'd otherwise need a warrant to access in the process of a criminal investigation. This "data broker loophole" is a massive gap in privacy protections that circumvents current statutory protections prohibiting domestic bulk collection.

The data broker loophole threat continues to grow as the use of artificial intelligence expands. AI systems amplify the risks of the data broker loophole by enabling large-scale analysis of sensitive personal data, making it easier to track individuals, build detailed profiles, and make decisions based on poorly understood internal processes. In March, arguments surfaced between the Pentagon and providers of AI search technology. The center of this dispute was the Pentagon's intention to collect and analyze "commercial bulk data on Americans, such as geolocation and web browsing data." OpenAI eventually agreed to a contract that limits DoD's use of its systems only to the extent that current law does, which is wholly inadequate for protecting our privacy and civil liberties.