Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act lets the government collect emails, texts, and calls of foreigners overseas without a warrant. That power is necessary. The problem is what happens next.
When your communications get swept up in that collection, the FBI can search through them looking for your name, your email address, your phone number. No warrant. No probable cause. No judge.
In 2021, the FBI ran 3.4 million of these searches on Americans. The FISA Court called the violations "persistent and widespread." Agents searched for a sitting U.S. senator, journalists, 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign, and thousands of Black Lives Matter protesters. None of those people were suspected of any crime.
Reforms brought the number down, but the FBI still runs thousands of improper queries every year. The government now has 349,823 foreign targets under Section 702 surveillance, and every communication that touches those targets is stored and searchable.
The SAFE Act, introduced by Senators Durbin and Lee, would fix this. It requires a warrant before the government searches Section 702 data for an American's information. It closes the loophole that lets agencies buy your location data and browsing history from data brokers without any legal process at all. And it narrows the 2024 expansion that turned data center workers and building landlords into compelled surveillance assistants.
A federal court already ruled in February 2025 that the Fourth Amendment requires a warrant for these searches. Congress should put that principle into law.
I am asking you to support the SAFE Act and vote against any reauthorization of Section 702 that does not include a warrant requirement for searching Americans' communications.
