Privacy and surveillance experts and United States lawmakers from both parties on Thursday warned that the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s continued access to Americans’ communications without a warrant under a controversial surveillance law risks turning a foreign intelligence tool into a standing engine for domestic spying.
Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, four witnesses—a former US attorney, a conservative litigator, a civil liberties advocate, and a tech-policy analyst—urged Congress to impose a probable-cause warrant requirement on searches of a vast government database built under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)—or allow the authority to expire when it comes up again for reauthorization this spring.
“Section 702 was sold to Congress as a vital tool to target foreign adversaries,” said Brett Tolman, a former US attorney in Utah and ex-Senate Judiciary Committee counsel. “We were given high-stakes assurances … that it would not be used improperly against honest Americans. I was in the room when they represented it would not be abused. That was a lie.”
“For decades and with increasing regularity,” he added, “it has been the government’s permission slip for warrantless spying on Americans.”
The stakes are especially high now under the Trump administration, because both the legal backdrop and political landscape have shifted against unchecked surveillance at the same time that executive power is being exercised more aggressively. A federal court has now held that warrantless “backdoor searches” of Americans’ Section 702 data are Fourth Amendment searches and were unconstitutional in at least one FBI case. At the same time, President Donald Trump has installed loyalists such as attorney general Pam Bondi, FBI director Kash Patel, and director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, all of whom publicly back 702 while facing deep skepticism from Democrats and some Republicans over the politicization of law enforcement.
Members at Thursday’s hearing accused the White House of already centralizing vast troves of federal data and issuing directives that target groups based on political beliefs, raising fears that a tool built to monitor foreigners could be repurposed against domestic opponents if Congress does not lock in judicial checks before 702’s April 20, 2026, sunset.
The unusual coalition arrayed against the 702 program cut across party and ideological lines. Liberal Democrats deeply distrustful of the administration’s domestic intelligence activities found themselves echoing complaints long voiced by conservative critics of “the deep state.”
“We have taken on our own parties, in power and out of power, because the Constitution doesn’t change depending on who is in the White House,” said Representative Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington, who had likewise urged limits on the FBI when Democrats governed.