Cybersecurity Policy Report, Administration’s Actions Create Fraught Environment for Surveillance Law Debate, Groups Warn, (Mar 13, 2026)
White House hostility toward dissent, civil rights, and congressional oversight has created an especially fraught climate for Congress as it debates the reauthorization of a key surveillance law, according to 90 civil society groups.
In a letter sent yesterday to Democratic leaders of Congress and the House and Senate Judiciary and Intelligence committees, the groups urged Democrats to oppose any reauthorization of section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that doesn’t add new restrictions on federal authorities’ powers to surveil Americans.
Section 702, which expires April 20, empowers U.S. intelligence agencies to monitor the communications of foreigners who are overseas and considered national security threats. But Americans’ communications are often swept up in section 702 surveillance when they communicate with a foreign intelligence target, and those communications can be searched by federal authorities under certain circumstances without a warrant, which detractors describe as “warrantless” surveillance.
Unlike past debates over section 702, this year’s reauthorization comes amid actions taken by the Trump administration that raise alarms for civil liberties advocates and deprive Congress of the information it needs to make informed decisions, the groups said.
“Congress is approaching this deadline with even less insight compared to past reauthorizations for what is an already-opaque program,” they said, citing President Trump’s firing of three members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) (CPR, Sept. 15, 2025).
“PCLOB currently has only one active member, meaning the agency lacks a quorum and the bipartisan membership required by statute—and has for over a year. And with less than two months to go until the expiration of Section 702, PCLOB is unable to provide the public and policymakers with any new independent oversight of the program,” they noted.
“But new reporting by Politico has only deepened concerns, as within the White House, Stephen Miller is now a ‘leading advocate’ for extending Section 702 without any reforms, and President Trump is reportedly supporting this approach,” the groups added.
Other concerns include the Trump administration’s characterization of political opponents as the “enemy within” and its threats of legal action against critics, they said.
“The case for reforming Section 702 has never been more urgent,” the groups said, listing several reforms that congressional Democrats should insist on.
“The most serious threat posed by Section 702 is the government’s warrantless querying of communications of people in the United States,” they warned. “Internal agency safeguards have proven insufficient in protecting privacy. Self-policing by agencies has failed to stop these harms in the past, and cannot be trusted to prevent them in the future.”
“The only way to reliably protect people in the United States is to establish a warrant rule, and require U.S. person queries to be approved by a judge based on a probable cause standard,” they said.
They also advocated for legislative steps to close the data broker “loophole” that’s enabled federal agencies to purchase personal information about Americans from data brokers without obtaining search warrants.
The letter was signed by, among others, the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Privacy Information Center, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Free Press Action.
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