The FBI's Warrantless Searches of Americans' Data Just Jumped 35%

The Numbers

The FBI's searches of Americans' data collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act rose from 5,518 in December 2024 to 7,413 in November 2025, according to an FBI letter to Congress obtained by Nextgov. That is a 35% increase in one year. And the timing could not be worse for the bureau, which is simultaneously lobbying Congress to renew the very authority that makes these searches possible.

Section 702 is due to expire in April 2026 unless Congress acts. The Trump administration is pushing for a clean reauthorization with no new restrictions. FBI Director Kash Patel and CIA Director John Ratcliffe met privately with Senate Republicans to argue for an extension. Meanwhile, dozens of progressive and civil liberties groups sent a letter to congressional Democrats urging them to block renewal without new privacy safeguards.

What Section 702 Actually Does

Section 702 permits the NSA, FBI, and other intelligence agencies to collect the communications of foreigners located outside the United States without individual court orders. The law was designed for foreign intelligence gathering, but it has a well documented side effect: when Americans communicate with foreign targets, their messages, emails, and phone calls get swept up in the collection.

Once those communications are in the database, the FBI can search them using identifiers linked to American citizens and residents. These are called US person queries. Unlike traditional law enforcement searches, they require no warrant, no probable cause, and no judicial approval. The FBI agent conducting the search simply needs to assert that the query is reasonably likely to return foreign intelligence information or evidence of a crime.

Privacy advocates have long argued that this creates a backdoor search loophole, effectively allowing warrantless surveillance of Americans by collecting their communications incidentally through foreign targeting and then searching the results domestically.

A History of Abuse

The 35% increase comes against a backdrop of documented misuse. In 2023, a declassified FISA court opinion revealed that the FBI had improperly queried Section 702 data on more than 278,000 occasions, including searches related to Black Lives Matter protesters, January 6 suspects, and a sitting member of Congress.

The FBI responded by implementing new internal safeguards, including requiring agents to opt in to US person queries rather than running them automatically. The bureau argued these reforms would reduce improper searches. For a time, the numbers did decrease. But the new data shows the trajectory has reversed sharply.

The bureau has not explained what is driving the increase. In their congressional communications, FBI officials emphasized that the searches are conducted within legal boundaries and subject to internal compliance procedures. But the absence of external oversight, specifically the lack of a warrant requirement, means the public has limited ability to verify those assurances.

The Congressional Battle

The Section 702 renewal debate has split along unusual lines. The traditional national security hawks support clean reauthorization, arguing the authority is essential for counterterrorism and counterintelligence. But a growing bipartisan coalition, including libertarian Republicans and progressive Democrats, wants to attach a warrant requirement for US person queries.

The EFF has called the current SAFE Act reform proposal an imperfect vehicle for real Section 702 reform, arguing that while it introduces some new safeguards, it falls short of requiring a warrant for queries that return Americans' communications. The organization points out that the reform proposals allow the FBI to continue warrantless searches in most circumstances, with exceptions only for queries that exclusively target Americans.

House Speaker Mike Johnson indicated he intends to bring a renewal vote the week before the authority lapses, creating a pressure cooker environment where the threat of expiration may override privacy concerns. As the April 20 deadline approaches, Johnson has confirmed the plan is a clean 18 month extension with no reforms.

What This Means for Your Privacy

If you communicate with anyone outside the United States by email, messaging apps, or phone, your communications could be in the Section 702 database. You would never know. There is no notification requirement, no right to challenge the collection, and no public accounting of how many Americans' communications are stored.

The 35% increase in queries means the FBI is accessing this data more aggressively, not less. The reform debate in Congress may produce new safeguards or it may produce a clean renewal that preserves the status quo. Either way, the decision will be made in the next few weeks, and its effects will last for years.

For anyone concerned about government access to their communications, the most effective protection remains end to end encryption. Services like Signal encrypt messages so that even if intercepted, the content cannot be read without the recipient's device. Section 702 can collect the metadata, who you talked to and when, but properly encrypted content remains protected even from the most powerful surveillance programs.