The FBI’s warrantless access to Americans’ private communications has operated under sustained legal and political pressure since a federal court ruled the practice unconstitutional in 2025. Now a bipartisan coalition in Congress is moving to codify that prohibition in law — and to reach well beyond it.
Senators Ron Wyden and Mike Lee, alongside Representatives Warren Davidson and Zoe Lofgren, introduced the Government Surveillance Reform Act of 2026 on Thursday. According to the announcement, the bill would impose a strict warrant requirement on the FBI’s backdoor searches of Americans’ communications swept up under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, while also repealing what its sponsors describe as unconstitutional expansions of broader warrantless wiretapping authority. The legislation arrives weeks before Section 702 itself sunsets on April 20.
Section 702 was designed to permit warrantless collection of communications belonging to foreign nationals located outside the United States. In practice, the program captures large volumes of communications involving American citizens, permanent residents, and others on US soil. The FBI has routinely searched that intercepted data without obtaining a warrant — the practice its critics call a backdoor search. Wyden argued this week that Congress is debating reauthorization without a full accounting of the government’s activities, warning of “another example of secret law related to Section 702” that successive administrations have refused to declassify. “When it is eventually declassified,” he said, “the American people will be stunned that it took so long.”
Oversight Dismantled as Reauthorization Approaches
The bill enters a surveillance environment where internal compliance mechanisms have been significantly weakened. FBI Director Kash Patel, who previously criticized warrantless searches before taking office, reversed course and now defends the program as a “critical tool.” In May 2025, Patel shuttered the FBI’s Office of Internal Auditing — the compliance unit credited with driving improper searches of Americans’ data down from more than 119,000 in 2022 to 5,518 in 2024. The FBI had used that compliance improvement as a central argument against imposing a warrant requirement.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has overseen parallel reductions in independent oversight, including mass firings of inspectors general and what the report describes as the incapacitation of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Gabbard also faces a whistleblower complaint alleging she shared National Security Agency intercepts with the White House for political purposes. Her office did not respond to a request for comment, and the FBI declined to issue a statement.
Broader Context Behind the Push
Davidson framed the legislation as a correction to a program stretched “far beyond its original purpose.” Wyden pointed specifically to commercially available data and advances in AI having “far outpaced the laws protecting Americans’ privacy” as factors demanding a legislative response.
The bill carries endorsements from civil liberties organizations across the political spectrum. Its introduction also coincides with a documented expansion of domestic surveillance activity: a 2024 directive from former FBI deputy director Paul Abbate urged agents to actively run queries on Americans to justify the program’s continued existence, while the current administration has directed counterterrorism resources toward domestic political groups and conducted raids on journalists’ homes.
The intelligence community and its congressional allies are expected to resist the measure, setting up a direct confrontation before the April reauthorization deadline.
Photo by Donghun Shin on Unsplash
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