Cybersecurity Policy Report, AI Developments Make Government Surveillance Restrictions More Urgent, Sen. Wyden Says, (Apr 16, 2026)
The advent of powerful AI (artificial intelligence) tools that can quickly sift through piles of personal data are another reason to enact new restrictions on the federal government’s surveillance powers, Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) said today.
“Under current law, the government can purchase detailed records of Americans’ movements, web browsing, and associations from public sources. Powerful AI makes it possible to assemble the scattered, individually innocuous data into a comprehensive picture of anybody’s personal life,” Sen. Wyden said on the Senate floor.
He noted that he recently wrote to leading AI developers to ask whether their federal contracts prohibited the use of their technologies for domestic surveillance (CPR, March 5). “None of them deny that their products could be used this way,” he said.
“I want America’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies to take advantage of new technologies that can help them protect public safety and national security. But new tools require new rules. And without new rules, you can count on the executive branch to run roughshod over Americans’ privacy rights and constitutional freedoms,” Sen. Wyden warned.
Sen. Wyden urged his colleagues to support legislation that would require new guardrails on the federal government’s surveillance authorities, including section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
Section 702 empowers U.S. intelligence agencies, with the help of U.S. service providers, to monitor the communications of foreigners who are overseas and considered national security threats. However, 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.
The House and Senate are aiming to reauthorize section 702 before it expires next Monday, and lawmakers from both parties, including Sen. Wyden, have proposed amendments that would require federal authorities to obtain probable-cause warrants before searching Americans’ communications that were gathered under section 702.
But the Trump administration has requested a “clean” reauthorization of section 702. The House was expected to begin debate today on a resolution that, if passed, would allow House members to begin consideration of HR 8035, which would reauthorize section 702 for 18 months without any changes in line with the administration’s request. At CPR’s deadline, however, the resolution, which was approved late Tuesday by the House Rules Committee, had not been brought to the floor.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) apparently has been unable to muster enough Republican votes to adopt the resolution, and Democrats were being advised to vote against it (CPR, April 15). Talks were reportedly underway between House leadership, the White House, and recalcitrant Republicans, who want to enact guardrails similar to those advocated by Sen. Wyden.
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