Intel agencies doubled use of US person-tied search terms under disputed spying power last year
The U.S. intelligence community in 2024 saw a twofold increase in the number of search terms used to query contents of U.S. persons’ communications retrieved under a controversial spying program, driven in part by efforts to identify foreign cyber and terrorism threats, according to a transparency report released last week.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in the report that 7,845 search terms were used in 2024 to query raw communications collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that were linked to known or presumed U.S. persons, up from 3,755 terms in the prior year.
Section 702 lets the FBI and NSA collect emails, texts and other communications of foreign targets overseas without a warrant by requiring tech and telecom companies to hand over data linked to specific users.
But the ordinance is contested because the law, as it stands, permits spy agencies to scoop up the communications of Americans who incidentally talk to foreign suspects, which privacy hawks argue creates an end-run around Fourth Amendment rights that bar unreasonable searches and seizures.
Collected 702 communications are stored in databases, where analysts query them for foreign intelligence. Civil libertarians have argued for a warrant measure for querying U.S. person data, a view long contested by intelligence officials who contend it would slow timely national security investigations and kneecap the intelligence-gathering tool’s practicality.
U.S. person statistics tied to 702 are closely tracked by civil liberties advocates because they offer a window into how often Americans’ communications are accessed under a program designed mainly for foreign spying that was only codified after post-9/11 intelligence abuses were unveiled in the Bush era.
Examples of search terms include names, phone numbers or email addresses tied to Americans, ODNI said. Because a warrant is not required under the program, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court signs off on the rules that govern how analysts choose their foreign targets and how they handle any U.S. communications that get swept up in collection procedures.
Analysts may query stored U.S. person data when they believe doing so is reasonably likely to return foreign intelligence.
“The use of U.S. person query terms vary from year to year to meet foreign intelligence mission requirements,” the ODNI report said. “[Calendar Year] 2024 U.S. person query terms were used, for example, to address international terrorist threats to the homeland and cybersecurity threats to U.S. infrastructure,” it adds, without elaborating on specific cases.
The intelligence community targeted some 292,000 people last year under the ordinance, up from around 269,000 in 2023, ODNI said.
Notably, the FBI’s direct queries of U.S. persons dropped sharply, with the bureau using 5,518 unique U.S. person search terms to comb through raw data collected under Section 702 between December 2023 and November 2024 — a dramatic drop from more than 119,000 just two years earlier.
ODNI attributed the steep decline to a mix of new legal limits imposed by the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act — signed by then-President Joe Biden last year — which reauthorized Section 702 with a number of reforms codified into the law. The lead U.S. intelligence office also cited growing caution among FBI analysts when handling sensitive search queries involving Americans.
In February, the FBI’s internal watchdog launched a review of how U.S. person data is queried by the bureau. 702 has been abused in the past, legal reviews have found, including when it was used to target racial justice protesters in 2020 and participants in the January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol riot.
A recent court ruling in New York found that the FBI improperly used its surveillance authority when conducting database searches and determined that accessing stored Section 702 data qualifies as a separate Fourth Amendment search.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has historically been a longtime privacy hawk who, in the past, publicly called for the dismantling of Section 702. Gabbard has since reversed her position on the tool, deeming it vital to national security. But notably, in her confirmation hearing, she said she supports a warrant requirement for the intelligence community to query data on U.S. persons. It’s unclear if her position on the law has shifted since beginning her job as DNI.
