Lawmakers are leery that AI will give old-fashioned snooping a dangerous new edge.<\/p>\n
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The long-running fight to rein in the government\u2019s power to search Americans\u2019 phone calls, emails and text messages without a warrant has gained new urgency on Capitol Hill over concerns that AI will supercharge state surveillance.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers are currently jockeying over reforms to a key law that enables warrantless monitoring of Americans\u2019 communications, with privacy advocates and national security hawks warning that AI will allow faster and more invasive analysis of vast amounts of information \u2014 including communications swept up in foreign intelligence programs and commercially available location or behavioral data.<\/p>\n
\u201cImagine instead of doing a query with one person that you turned AI loose on these databases,\u201d Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said Thursday at a press conference announcing a new bill to close data-collection loopholes<\/a>. \u201cThere\u2019s virtually nothing the government can\u2019t know about you.\u201d<\/p>\n Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) allows the government to collect the communications of foreigners abroad, but it also enables the government to collect messages, emails and other transmissions from Americans when they contact foreigners. The government can then perform warrantless searches on those emails, messages and other communications. Though the provision was originally passed in 2008, lawmakers must renew it every few years.<\/p>\n A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers has emerged in recent weeks to tackle concerns about AI\u2019s ability to search through the mountains of data procured through Section 702. In March, Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, and co-sponsors in the House and Senate introduced a sweeping FISA reform bill<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cFor years, there have been jaw-dropping abuses of section 702,\u201d Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a co-sponsor of the Government Surveillance Reform Act, said on the Senate floor last week. \u201cGovernment officials have searched through 702 data to find Black Lives Matter protesters, political campaign donors, elected officials, even a state judge who complained about police abuses.\u201d<\/p>\n FORSUBSCRIBERS<\/p>\n 02:36<\/p>\n America\u2019s law enforcement agencies should be able to harness technology responsibly, Wyden said, \u201cbut new tools require new rules. Without new rules, you can count on the executive branch to run roughshod over Americans\u2019 privacy rights and constitutional freedoms.\u201d<\/p>\n While the FISA renewal process is often fraught, as opposing sides weigh the trade-offs between surveillance and security, this year\u2019s fight has been particularly acrimonious. Section 702 was set to expire on Monday, but lawmakers agreed to a 10-day extension to provide more time to debate new protections and safeguards.<\/p>\n The White House has pushed congressional Republicans<\/a> to pass an extension of Section 702 without any changes.<\/p>\n In a statement, a White House spokesperson told NBC News: \u201cThe Administration continues to have positive conversations and remains open to proposals that Congress can reach consensus on that would reauthorize FISA.\u201d<\/p>\n On Thursday afternoon, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., introduced a new version of the spy law<\/a> that would extend Section 702 for three years. While the new bill added some safeguards, the text did not add a requirement for search warrants sought by some Republicans.<\/p>\n In a statement to NBC News, Wyden said the latest draft was window dressing for the same hollow privacy guarantees: \u201cThe latest House FISA bill is a rubber stamp for [President Donald] Trump and [FBI Director] Kash Patel to spy on Americans without a warrant. Don\u2019t fall for fake reforms.\u201d<\/p>\n Thursday\u2019s draft follows a dramatic midnight mutiny<\/a> last Friday from a group of 20 House Republicans, many of whom belong to the conservative House Freedom Caucus. Johnson had called a vote on a longer, five-year extension<\/a> for Section 702 that was quickly beaten back. A final vote at 2:07 a.m. on reauthorizing the legislation<\/a> for 18 months also failed, leading Johnson to agree to the 10-day extension while members hash out a new version.<\/p>\n Even some Democrats who had previously voted in favor of Section 702 in 2024 are now refusing to reauthorize the law without meaningful amendments.<\/p>\n \u201cWe must reform FISA to protect our privacy and civil liberties and ensure that Section 702 will not be used to spy illegally on Americans,\u201d said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., in a hearing last week<\/a>. Like others, Raskin highlighted the Trump administration\u2019s hollowing out of existing oversight mechanisms, like the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, as reasons to ensure stronger safeguards.<\/p>\n \u201cTimes have changed since 2024. The watchdogs are gone,\u201d said Raskin. \u201cThose reforms now depend on Trump administration officials to respect the law, which I am afraid is oxymoronic, if not just moronic.\u201d<\/p>\n He also noted that many surveillance activities allowed by Section 702 will already continue through March 2027 due to a legislative stipulation extending the authority for months if Congress cannot agree on a longer-term reauthorization.<\/p>\n Privacy advocates have long sought<\/a> to require warrants for searches of Americans\u2019 data swept into the databases powered by Section 702 and curated by data brokers. At the same time, many national security proponents and experts in the intelligence community argue that such restrictions would impede law enforcement efforts and pose severe national security risks.<\/p>\n The CIA and other intelligence agencies have also weighed in on the Section 702 debate, highlighting the authority\u2019s importance to American security efforts. \u201cTo be clear, the US Government cannot use Section 702 to target Americans\u2019 electronic communications for<\/p>\n Collection,\u201d a CIA handout says<\/a>, adding that the law helped prevent a terror attack at a Taylor Swift concert in Austria<\/a>. \u201cSection 702 is the most extensively overseen US intelligence collection tool, with built-in protections for Americans\u2019 privacy and civil liberties.\u201d<\/p>\n However, civil liberties advocates note that Americans\u2019 data is often collected even when they are not explicitly targeted and that agencies then run searches on Americans once this data is obtained.<\/p>\n \u201cSection 702 is so vast that it incidentally collects Americans\u2019 information,\u201d said Jason Pye, vice president of the Due Process Institute, a bipartisan nonprofit that advocates for fairness in the legal system. \u201cThe FBI can then search for a person, for an American, without a warrant. That\u2019s what we\u2019re trying to solve.\u201d<\/p>\n Alongside the sharp exchanges about Section 702, lawmakers are also debating whether to introduce new restrictions on the government\u2019s ability to purchase data from third-party data brokers. These brokers collect and curate commercially available data on Americans gleaned from advertisements and other tracking technologies, along with information from public records.<\/p>\n Brokers sell their data to paying customers \u2014 including government agencies \u2014 who can then search these databases to track Americans\u2019 precise locations, internet browsing activity, travel history, known associates and family members, and even purchase history and transaction patterns.<\/p>\n The directors of the National Security Agency<\/a> and the FBI<\/a> have acknowledged that the agencies buy data on Americans from third-party brokers to use in their investigations. Yet experts say that the rise of AI could allow government agencies to conduct more \u2014 and more accurate \u2014 searches of commercial data and information contained in Section 702 databases.<\/p>\n \u201cThe technology allows basically a panopticon,\u201d said Brendan Steinhauser, CEO of the nonprofit Alliance for Secure AI, which aims to educate Americans about risks from AI, and a leading conservative voice on the technology. \u201cYou can just have AI finding the patterns, aggregating data and allowing the government to build this enormous surveillance state that threatens our civil liberties.\u201d<\/p>\n In late March, Wyden sent a letter to America\u2019s leading AI companies to understand whether they would allow the government to use their technology to surveil Americans, including through the collection of bulk commercial data or intelligence data that might inadvertently include Americans\u2019 information.<\/p>\n Wyden\u2019s office said only Anthropic and Google replied, with no reply from OpenAI or xAI.<\/p>\n The companies\u2019 replies, shared exclusively with NBC News, note the lawmaker\u2019s concerns but largely avoid details about how the companies allow government users to analyze foreign intelligence data.<\/p>\n \u201cWe recognize that complex challenges can be posed by the intersection of rapidly advancing AI and government operations,\u201d wrote Anne Wall, Google\u2019s head of U.S. federal government affairs and public policy. \u201cAs we navigate this landscape, our teams maintain a deep respect for the privacy and civil liberties of individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n In the response from Anthropic, the company\u2019s head of North America government affairs, Brian Peters, said it was committed to protecting civil liberties and had designed its usage policy to ban \u201cunauthorized surveillance or tracking of individuals.\u201d Peters said Anthropic barred \u201canalysis of the product of bulk domestic collection,\u201d appearing to reference the practices of commercial data brokers.<\/p>\n However, referring to Wyden\u2019s Section 702 concerns, Peters said Anthropic had granted an exception \u201cto a small number of national-security customers, permitting the use of our models for foreign intelligence analysis in accordance with applicable law.\u201d Peters said that Anthropic\u2019s AI systems could be used to analyze this foreign intelligence information, even if it \u201cincludes incidentally collected U.S.-person information.\u201d<\/p>\n Anthropic, developer of the popular Claude family of AI models, made a public stand earlier this year after expressing concerns about how the Pentagon would use its systems, particularly regarding the use of AI for domestic mass surveillance.<\/p>\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com\/image\/upload\/rockcms\/2026-01\/asterisk-43f04b.svg\")
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Filmmakers defend new film starring an AI-generated Val Kilmer<\/p>\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776469521719_now_hallie_mclaughlin_misinfo_260417_S3_1920x1080-w93yfi.jpg\")
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