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Privacy advocates warn that renewing a key federal surveillance authority without restrictions on artificial intelligence and commercially purchased data could give intelligence agencies the ability to build detailed profiles of Americans and monitor entire communities without warrants.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
Congress is facing growing pressure to overhaul a federal surveillance program before its scheduled reauthorization as privacy advocates warn that artificial intelligence could allow government agencies to analyze Americans’ communications and personal data on a scale that was not possible when the law was enacted.
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act must be reauthorized by March 2027. The authority permits federal intelligence agencies to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance involving foreign nationals suspected of wrongdoing, including those located overseas or traveling in the United States.
Although Americans are not supposed to be the program’s targets, their emails, text messages and telephone communications are frequently collected when they interact with monitored foreign nationals. Intelligence agencies may retain that information for as long as five years, and federal personnel regularly search the stored communications without first obtaining a warrant.
Privacy advocates argue that advances in AI have substantially increased the risks associated with retaining and searching such large collections of information. Rather than requiring teams of analysts to manually examine records, agencies could use artificial intelligence systems to organize the material, identify connections and assemble detailed profiles of U.S. citizens who have not been accused of crimes.
“The concern is that artificial intelligence AI could be used in these databases to effectively target and collect information in ways that we hadn’t seen before,” Don Bell, policy counsel at The Constitution Project at the Project On Government Oversight, told The Center Square.
“What we’re seeing now is a truly unprecedented merger of increasing technological capabilities and a federal government that is willing to use these tools to target not just individuals but broad sections of American society.”
The U.S. Intelligence Community and Department of Justice have previously said they are not using AI to search FISA databases. Bell and other critics contend, however, that the agencies have not provided evidence requested by lawmakers to substantiate those assurances.
Section 702 also contains no explicit prohibition preventing federal agencies from obtaining information through private data brokers, a practice critics describe as the “data broker loophole.” Those companies gather extensive records about consumers and sell access to databases containing thousands of personal data points.
“Data brokers collect performance management information, and they basically package that up and sell thousands of data points that they claim to have on people. And the federal government, rather than getting a warrant for a lot of that information, just circumvents the constitution by buying it from these massive data sets,” Bell said.
“But you would need a lot of money and people and time to sort through that and build the profiles necessary for effective surveillance. But with artificial intelligence, that makes it more efficient, cheaper and more doable.”
Bell and representatives of several organizations tested those capabilities by creating a basic AI model in approximately two weeks and pairing it with subscriptions to commercial data brokers. The system was able to produce extensive personal profiles within seconds.
“So it looks basically like typing into a search engine bar, ‘find X person at Planned Parenthood’ — but it could have been X person at a gun range, pick your place — and within seconds, this AI agent was able to pull all kinds of information on this individual,” Bell said.
“Not just their name and date of birth, but where they lived, where they worked, who their children were, financial information, things that obviously could kill constitutionally protected speech and really create a dossier on someone,” he continued.
The demonstration also showed that an AI system could identify people who had traveled to a selected location and determine how long they remained there, creating the possibility of monitoring groups based on their visits to medical facilities, houses of worship, political organizations, gun ranges or other sensitive locations.
“They were also able to basically draw a circle around the Planned Parenthood clinic — but again, it could be anyplace — and they were able to create a map showing all of the people in the community who were traveling to this place, how long they were there, all of that information.”
Bell said the danger is not limited to the amount of information that could be gathered. AI allows enormous databases to be searched, sorted and connected almost instantly, potentially transforming surveillance that once required substantial staffing, time and money into an inexpensive and automated process.
“If the government is purchasing our data and our location data and they can use artificial intelligence to create these kinds of profiles, then there is no privacy,” Bell said. “They can reach into our lives in the most invasive way possible, and they can do it at scale. Entire communities can be surveilled, entire groups of people.”
He argued that federal surveillance law has not kept pace with technological developments and that the combination of warrantless searches, commercially acquired information and AI represents a “dangerously escalating pattern of surveillance.”
“That’s why it’s so important for Congress to take a stand now to close the data loophole, and also really think about how the changes in surveillance technology really are an existential threat to the Constitution and our privacy,” Bell said.
Lawmakers remain divided over whether Section 702 should be renewed in its current form or subjected to substantial changes. Nearly every House Democrat and 19 Republicans recently joined to defeat an attempt to pass a clean extension of the authority, with opponents raising concerns about Americans’ privacy and the absence of warrant requirements.
Even without congressional reauthorization, the surveillance program may continue operating until March 2027. The FISA Court approves Section 702 certifications that remain valid for one year, allowing surveillance authorized under those certifications to continue temporarily even after the underlying statutory authority expires.
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