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Congress Must End Warrantless Spying Program
Trump is more than willing to risk your rights and privileges for the sake of the America he desires. For a petty narcissist obsessed with revenge, section 702 of FISA is another dangerous and powerful tool for furthering his authoritarian agenda.
Apr 24, 2026
On April 17, Congress voted to pass a brief 10-day extension of section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. This sets the new expiration date for April 30, 2026.
Section 702 was added to FISA in 2008 with a provision that requires Congress to periodically reauthorize it. The measure allows national security agencies like the National Security Agency (NSA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to collect and monitor—without a warrant—any electronic communications sent to and from non-US persons “reasonably believed to be located” outside the US. Notably, Americans who send messages to people abroad may likewise have their data surveilled.
Law enforcement agencies have consistently abused this loophole to spy on US citizens in clear violation of their Fourth Amendment rights. The Brennan Center for Justice reports that, in recent years, the government has conducted warrantless “searches for the communications of 141 Black Lives Matter protesters; 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign; members of Congress; multiple US government officials, political commentators, and journalists; and tens of thousands of Americans engaged in ‘civil unrest.’”
Even President Donald Trump alleges being a victim of these “backdoor searches.” Ahead of the last renewal vote in April 2024, Trump posted on Truth Social, “KILL FISA, IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHERS. THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN!!! DJT.”
The Trump administration perfectly encapsulates the dangers that section 702 presents to the American public and the wider international community. Far from preventing terrorism, section 702 enables it.
Since returning to the White House, however, his tone has notably shifted. On April 15, Trump posted that Republicans must “UNIFY” to pass a “clean extension of FISA 702.” He continues, “While parts of FISA were illegally and unfortunately used against me in the Democrats’ disgraceful Witch Hunt and Attack in the RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA Hoax, and perhaps would be used against me in the future, I am willing to risk the giving up of my Rights and Privileges as a Citizen for our Great Military and Country!”
Trump’s strong endorsement of section 702 is unsurprising. His administration has actively worked to undermine the rights and protections the Constitution guarantees. This includes: (i) subpoenaing social media sites to turn over the personal data of users who have criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement; (ii) actively exploring a proposal to detain US citizens and deport them to prisons in El Salvador; (iii) violating states’ rights by threatening to cut funding to sanctuary cities as well as commandeering state and local officials to do the federal government’s bidding; (iv) working to disenfranchise voters via the election-rigging SAVE America Act; and (v) his administration’s efforts to restrict birthright citizenship, among many other examples.
Trump is more than willing to risk your rights and privileges for the sake of the America he desires. For a petty narcissist obsessed with revenge, section 702 is another dangerous and powerful tool for furthering his authoritarian agenda.
Already, Trump is actively exploiting section 702 to advance his illegal wars. On April 14, he posted, “Our Military desperately needs FISA 702, and it is one of the reasons we have had such tremendous SUCCESS on the battlefield, both in Venezuela and Iran.” These ‘successes’—or more accurately, war crimes and violations of international law—include kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro; assassinating Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; and inciting a reckless war of choice that has seen the US and Israel deliberately target schools, hospitals, and residential buildings.
The Trump administration perfectly encapsulates the dangers that section 702 presents to the American public and the wider international community. Far from preventing terrorism, section 702 enables it.
To be clear, however, the reasons for ending section 702 go beyond the Trump administration. First, the measure undermines the very rationale for FISA. FISA was enacted in 1978 following the revelations of widespread warrantless surveillance under the Nixon administration. This included not only the infamous Watergate scandal, but also spying on anti-war protesters and civil rights activists under the guise that they were linked to foreign communist groups. FISA requires intelligence agencies to obtain authorization for electronic surveillance and other investigative actions. It also establishes the FISA court to oversee requests for surveillance warrants.
Section 702 bypasses these safeguards. Once the government collects a target’s data, the FBI and other agencies can search through it to find Americans’ phone calls, text messages, and emails without a warrant or approval from the FISA court. Section 702 allows the government to engage in the very kinds of Nixonian abuses FISA was designed to prevent.
Keeping in line with Trump’s interests, Johnson’s proposal would permit the federal government to continue its assault against the American public and the global community unimpeded.
In fact, section 702 originally grew out of a secret warrantless surveillance program authorized by the Bush administration following the 9/11 attacks. The New York Times exposed the Terrorism Surveillance Program (TSP) to the public in 2005, triggering a wave of lawsuits. In 2006, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled that TSP violated FISA and the Constitution. Despite this, as the American Civil Liberties Union notes, “Congress weakened FISA in 2007 and then again in 2008 to permit the warrantless wiretapping that the law had previously prohibited.” Instead of shutting down Bush’s unconstitutional program, Congress effectively codified it.
Second, and relatedly, section 702 cannot be meaningfully reformed precisely because the measure is antithetical to FISA itself. In 2023, amid another FISA renewal debate, then-FBI director Christopher Wray told Congress that he was “especially concerned” about a proposal that would require the government to obtain a warrant or court order before accessing information obtained using section 702. He remarked that, “A warrant requirement would amount to a de facto ban, because query applications either would not meet the legal standard to win court approval; or because, when the standard could be met, it would be so only after the expenditure of scarce resources, the submission and review of a lengthy legal filing, and the passage of significant time.”
This makes sense. After all, the entire point of section 702 is to authorize a warrantless surveillance program. A warrant requirement would effectively render it useless.
More modest attempts at reform have been proposed and even implemented. The 2024 Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act (RISAA), for instance, introduced a few provisions aimed at restricting backdoor searches. Yet, within a few months, the FBI was already violating those new requirements. While the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) contends that RISAA has led to a steep decline in backdoor searches, the reality is that the FBI failed to track all such queries in 2024 and 2025. Whether RISAA has had any real impact is thus unknown. That said, even if a decline occurred, RISAA—and similar proposals—would still have failed at solving the fundamental problem: prohibiting warrantless government surveillance and mass data collection.
This is the dilemma reformists face: A warrant requirement is a “de facto ban,” but any other form of restrictions will, at best, only lessen the number of people whose constitutional rights are violated.
The proposed three-year extension unveiled by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) on April 23 is no better. It includes minimal new oversight and penalties for abusing the spy program, but no warrant requirements. As Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) remarked: “Instead of ending warrantless surveillance or creating more transparency about government spying, this bill only requires a few more Trump administration officials to check a box. That always leads to more abuses, not less.” Keeping in line with Trump’s interests, Johnson’s proposal would permit the federal government to continue its assault against the American public and the global community unimpeded.
Third, while Trump and the CIA make sweeping claims about the terror attacks that section 702 has prevented, there is little publicly available evidence to support this. According to the Cato Institute, there is only one well-documented, independently corroborated case of section 702 preventing a terrorist attack on American soil: the 2009 New York subway bombing plot. In that case, section 702 was used by the NSA to track an exchange between an al-Qaeda courier and Najibullah Zazi, who was living in the US. The NSA passed this information to the FBI, which identified Zazi and disrupted the attack before it took place. Importantly, however, the NSA allegedly received the courier’s foreign email address from the government’s British Intelligence partners. At best then, this success was a byproduct of productive intelligence sharing between allies. Rather than proving the necessity of section 702, this incident underscores how Trump’s inane attacks against key US allies undermine our national security.
Congress should end section 702 and shift their focus to implementing more meaningful guardrails and oversight to FISA. At a time when constitutional rights are under unprecedented threat, Congress must act in the best interest of the public. While there’s still time, I urge everyone to contact their representatives and express their opposition to extending section 702.
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Congress Urged to Require Warrants in Reauthorization of Key Spy Power
"FISA 702 has been abused in shocking ways," said one campaigner. "If Congress genuinely cares about surveillance abuse, weaponization, and 'lawfare,' it needs to rein in this warrantless surveillance power."
Feb 24, 2026
Privacy advocates are backing a bipartisan bill introduced in the US Senate this week that's intended to protect Americans from warrantless government surveillance.
Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) unveiled the Security and Freedom Enhancement (SAFE) Act on Monday, in the wake of Politico reporting that President Donald Trump's White House "is quietly pushing for a key spy authority to be extended as is into 2027, according to five people granted anonymity to discuss the private talks."
There have long been arguments on Capitol Hill and beyond over Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which empowers the federal government to surveil electronic communications without a warrant. The law only allows for targeting foreigners outside the United States to acquire foreign intelligence information, but Americans' data is also collected.
Despite such arguments, Congress reauthorized Section 702 nearly two years ago, under then-President Joe Biden. That decision is set to expire on April 20, setting up a new battle over the spying power—hence the bill's introduction this week.
Under Durbin and Lee's proposal, the authority would be extended another two years, but government agencies must obtain a FISA Title I order or a warrant before accessing Americans' communications. As the pair noted in a statement, it also "closes the 'data broker loophole' that intelligence and law enforcement agencies use to buy their way around the Fourth Amendment" to the US Constitution, which bars unreasonable searches and seizures and details requirements for issuing warrants.
"Section 702 is a valuable tool to help keep our nation safe," said Durbin. "However, it's being used to conduct thousands of warrantless searches of Americans' private communications. That's unacceptable. Our bipartisan SAFE Act is a commonsense solution to continue protecting our country from foreign threats—while safeguarding Americans' civil liberties and privacy."
In a Tuesday statement welcoming the legislation, Demand Progress senior policy adviser Hajar Hammado highlighted that "right now, the government can freely troll through your private emails and texts swept up in 702 collections and this power has been abused to spy on everyday Americans, journalists, and even members of Congress."
"No government, whether it's run by Donald Trump and Stephen Miller or Joe Biden, should be able to do this," argued Hammado. According to Politico, Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, "is a leading advocate" for extending Section 702.
Hammado stressed that "the SAFE Act is a bipartisan solution to this problem, and all members of Congress should not support reauthorization without these critical reforms. We thank Sens. Lee and Durbin for their leadership on this bill and for modeling how Republicans and Democrats can come together to stop oppressive government overreach."
Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Center for Democracy & Technology's Security & Surveillance project, also endorsed the bill in a Tuesday statement.
"FISA 702 has been abused in shocking ways," said Laperruque. "The FBI has misused it to snoop on protesters, lawmakers, journalists, judges, and campaign donors. If Congress genuinely cares about surveillance abuse, weaponization, and 'lawfare,' it needs to rein in this warrantless surveillance power."
"The SAFE Act includes bold FISA reforms, creates strong guardrails against surveillance misconduct, and has been meticulously crafted to protect national security," he continued. "With less than 10 weeks until FISA 702 expires, Congress should take up reform legislation quickly. Kicking the can on FISA would be a dereliction of duty."
A CDT-led coalition of privacy advocates across the political spectrum recently identified these as the four key issues to address in FISA reform. The SAFE Act effectively takes on all of them. With just SEVEN weeks until FISA 702 expires, we hope Congress will quickly take up this vital bill.
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— Jake Laperruque (@jakelaperruque.bsky.social) February 24, 2026 at 12:22 PM
Republicans have a narrow majority in both chambers of Congress but, due to Senate rules, generally need some Democratic support to send legislation to Trump's desk. However, the GOP could also run into trouble on this issue in the House of Representatives. As Politico pointed out last week:
Ultimately, there's no easy path to pass a clean extension in the House. One of the people with knowledge of the discussions said GOP leaders are "going to have a problem" trying to unite Republicans behind a special "rule" allowing for an up-or-down floor vote on a clean extension, which are typically party-line affairs.
But Republicans also believe that with Trump in office, a number of Democrats who previously supported leaving Section 702 intact will now support putting more fetters on intelligence agencies—making the alternative route, a two-thirds-majority bipartisan vote under suspension of the rules, all but impossible.
The latest Section 702 fight comes as Trump is under fire for his rising authoritarianism, from invasions of US cities targeting immigrants to his sweeping assault on First Amendment rights, including reported federal watch lists to track and categorize US citizens—especially activists and protesters—as "domestic terrorists."
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Former ICE Lawyer Says Agency Is Teaching Recruits to 'Violate the Constitution'
"Never in my career had I ever received such a blatantly unlawful order," said Ryan Schwank, who blew the whistle last month on a "secretive" ICE memo directing agents to enter homes without judicial warrants.
Feb 24, 2026
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is "lying to Congress and the American people" and directing new recruits to "violate the Constitution," according to a whistleblower who testified on Capitol Hill Monday.
Ryan Schwank, a former ICE lawyer who worked at the federal government’s law enforcement training academy, stepped down from his post last week after submitting a whistleblower complaint about an agency policy directing agents to enter homes and arrest people without a judge's warrant.
"I swore an oath to uphold the Constitution," Schwank said at a joint forum on ICE's constitutional violations hosted by Senate and House Democrats. "I followed that oath for four-and-a-half years, working side by side with ICE officers. And I followed it when I resigned on February 13, 2026, a little over a week ago, so I could speak to you today."
He had joined ICE in 2021 as a senior lawyer for the agency, tasked with advising agents on immigration laws and the Constitution. In September 2025, amid President Donald Trump's "surge" in recruitment to carry out his "mass deportation" crusade, Schwank became an instructor for new recruits at the ICE Academy at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia.
"On my first day," Schwank said, "I received secretive orders to teach new cadets to violate the Constitution by entering homes without a judicial warrant."
Schwank said he was “instructed to read and return a memo" that claimed ICE agents had this power in the presence of his supervisor. “Before I was shown this memo, my supervisor warned me that two previous ICE instructors had been dismissed because they questioned senior ICE management over the legality of the memo.”
That memo, which was sent to US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials in May, was revealed to the Senate last month through a whistleblower disclosure by Schwank and another official whose identity has not yet been made public.
“The acting ICE director authorized the very conduct that DHS—in 2025 legal training materials—has called ‘the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed’—that is, ‘physical entry of the home’ without consent or a proper warrant,” Schwank said.
His testimony confirms previous reporting from the Associated Press, which found that these orders were distributed in a highly unusual way: DHS officials like Schwank were shown the memo before being required to return it to their supervisors and relay the information verbally to new recruits without showing them the directive.
Under this new directive, the whistleblower report said “newly hired ICE agents—many of whom do not have a law enforcement background—are now being directed to rely solely on” an administrative warrant drafted and signed by an ICE official to enter homes and make arrests.
“No court has ever found that any law enforcement has this type of authority to enter homes without a judicial warrant under such circumstances,” said David Kligerman, the senior vice president and special counsel for Whistleblower Aid, the group that sent the disclosure to Congress.
“Never in my career had I ever received such a blatantly unlawful order—nor one conveyed in such a troubling manner,” Schwank said on Monday. “I was being shown this memo in secret by a supervisor who made sure that I understood that disobedience could cost me my job. ICE is teaching cadets to violate the Constitution, and they were attempting to cloak it in secrecy.”
Schwank also said that top ICE and DHS officials were deceiving Congress and the public when they claimed that the new officers and agents brought on as part of the agency's hiring spree were receiving the same basic training as in the past, even as agency syllabi showed that their training hours had been slashed by about 40%.
Testifying before Congress earlier this month, ICE's acting director, Todd Lyons, said that while hours have been cut, “The meat of the training was never removed."
"This is a lie,” Schwank said. “ICE made the program shorter, and they removed so many essential parts that what remains is a dangerous husk. No reasonable person would believe a training program suddenly cut nearly in half could meet the minimum legal requirements.”
The Trump administration has said the reduction of ICE training by more than 240 hours was mostly the result of eliminating Spanish-language classes.
However, according to dozens of pages of internal documents released by Senate Democrats, which were reviewed by the New York Times, the agency's February syllabus had also eliminated classes about the proper use of force, handling the property of detainees, filling out paperwork alleging someone is in the United States without authorization, taking a "victim-centered approach," and "integrity awareness training."
The number of exams agents must take has also been drastically reduced, from 25 in 2021 down to just nine. Some of the exams no longer required are ones on "Judgment Pistol Shooting” and “Determine Removability,” which the Times said was "a reference to how agents decide if people they encounter have legal status in the United States."
Schwank’s testimony comes after immigration agents shot and killed three United States citizens in recent weeks, causing heightened scrutiny of ICE and other DHS agencies. Since Trump's second inauguration on January 20, at least 32 people have been shot by agents, resulting in nine deaths.
In areas where ICE has been surged, such as Minnesota—which was swarmed by around 3,000 agents late last year—numerous instances have been documented of what appear to be uses of unnecessary force, racial profiling, and violations of constitutional rights.
“I am here because I am duty-bound to report the legally required training program at the ICE academy is deficient, defective, and broken,” Schwank said. “Deficient training can and will get people killed... It can and will lead to unlawful arrests, violations of constitutional rights, and fundamental loss of public trust in law enforcement.”
Schwank's testimony came as a partial shutdown of DHS entered its second week, after Democrats refused to fund the agency without significant reforms to ICE, including requirements that they obtain judicial warrants and carry out their duties without masks.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who chaired Monday's panel, said he hopes Schwank's testimony will encourage other whistleblowers to come forward.
“We know about the Trump administration’s decimation of training for immigration officers and its secret policy to shred your Constitutional rights because of the brave Americans who are speaking out today,” Blumenthal said. “They are coming to Congress because we have the responsibility to not only bear witness to these crimes, but to do something to make sure they don’t happen again.”
“To anyone else who is repulsed by what you’re seeing or what authorities are asking you to do, please know that you can make a real difference by coming forward," he added. "You’ll meet a moral imperative. Our door is open, we are here for you when you are ready, and we will do everything within our power to protect your rights.”
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