{"id":21372,"date":"2026-04-15T13:46:39","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T13:46:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/the-ai-threat-undercutting-the-white-houses-fisa-push\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T13:46:39","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T13:46:39","slug":"the-ai-threat-undercutting-the-white-houses-fisa-push","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/the-ai-threat-undercutting-the-white-houses-fisa-push\/","title":{"rendered":"The AI threat undercutting the White House’s FISA push"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The growing power of artificial intelligence is driving new worries among both Republicans and Democrats about government agencies\u2019 warrantless purchases of Americans\u2019 sensitive data. And it’s complicating efforts to renew a federal spying law before it expires \u2014 including as House GOP leaders struggle to cobble together support for passage Wednesday a clean, 18-month reauthorization, per President Donald Trump\u2019s wishes.<\/p>\n

The federal government has long used commercially available information bought from data brokers for national security, military operations and criminal investigations, bypassing constitutional restrictions on what kinds of information agencies can gather on Americans directly. But agencies\u2019 surveillance capabilities were limited by the vast amount of labor and expertise required to analyze millions of data points.<\/p>\n

Now, though, AI is eroding that barrier<\/u><\/a>, making it possible to parse massive amounts of personal information with ease. That\u2019s causing a bipartisan group of lawmakers to call for requiring agencies to get warrants before making those purchases.<\/p>\n

\u201cArtificial intelligence has transformed American industries for the better while enabling an unprecedented capability to glean information from private data, increasing the risk of unconstitutional government overreach,\u201d Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), a co-sponsor on the Government Surveillance Reform Act, saidin a statement.<\/p>\n

Her bill would require federal agencies to get a warrant when buying Americans\u2019 data, and when accessing Americans\u2019 private communications under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.<\/p>\n

She and other lawmakers are also calling for Congress to insist on privacy safeguards before it reauthorizes Section 702\u2019s surveillance capabilities, which were meant to collect data from non-U.S. citizens but have been used to investigate Americans without a warrant. The Trump administration and Speaker Mike Johnson want to reauthorize the law without changes before it expires Monday. Some lawmakers fear AI will enhance the government\u2019s surveillance capabilities, pointing at how intelligence agencies have used Section 702\u2019s authority toobtain data from Black Lives Matter protesters and political donors<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cPassing FISA 702 without strong new guardrails, while doing nothing to stop the government from buying Americans\u2019 location data and feeding it into AI systems to conduct unprecedented mass surveillance, would be shocking negligence,\u201d Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said in a statement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The growing power of artificial intelligence is driving new worries among both Republicans and Democrats about government agencies\u2019 warrantless purchases of Americans\u2019 sensitive data. And it’s complicating efforts to renew a federal spying law before it expires \u2014 including as House GOP leaders struggle to cobble together support for passage Wednesday a clean, 18-month reauthorization, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21372\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}