Privacy

Congress Has Until April 20 to Take Action on 702. Tell Them Not to Drop The Ball

There are no excuses for any Member of Congress to support a clean reauthorization of Section 702. Anyone who votes to do so does not take your privacy seriously. Full stop.

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is among the United States’ most infamous mass surveillance programs. Sold to the public as a foreign surveillance tool, it has become a backdoor for law enforcement to search through Americans’ private communications without ever obtaining a warrant. We need to act now to prevent Congress from reauthorizing 702 in a way that ignores the truth: This authority needs to change.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has confirmed that “the plan is to move a clean extension of FISA… for at least 18 months.” Our demands are common sense: no renewal without real reforms. A simple extension is a betrayal of every US resident who expects their government to respect their rights and the Constitution.

Your representative needs to hear from you right now, before the April 20 deadline. Contact them today.

Tell them: No vote on any bills that would reauthorize Section 702 without meaningful reform.

In 2025, a federal district court held that backdoor searches of databases full of Americans’ private communications collected under Section 702 ordinarily require a warrant. The landmark ruling comes in a criminal case, United States v. Hasbajrami, after more than a decade of litigation, and over four years since the Second Circuit Court of Appeals found that backdoor searches constitute “separate Fourth Amendment events” and directed the district court to determine a warrant was required. And yet, Congress has not acted with the urgency it needs to protect our civil liberties. Worse, it seems poised to renew the surveillance authority with no reforms.

The intelligence community and its defenders in Congress, as always, seem more interested in defending their rights to read your private communications than in protecting your right to privacy. We cannot afford any clean extension of a warrantless surveillance system. Contact your Members of Congress and tell them: No reauthorization of Section 702 without substantial reform.

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