'If You Can Keep It': The Future Of The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

1A · Apr 20, 2026 · 44m

Most of us would agree that access to foreign intelligence is important to national security. But whose private data gets swept up in the process?

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was first established in 1978 following Watergate. It’s a key U.S. surveillance tool. Section 702 was added to the act in 2008 allowing the government to collect the communications of more than 300,000 foreign nationals outside of the U.S. without a warrant every year. And the Trump administration would like to keep it that way even though lawmakers on both sides of the aisle worry that the act…