FBI Section 702 Queries of Americans’ Data Increased in 2025
The FBI conducted 7,413 U.S. person queries of data collected under Section 702 of FISA between December 2024 and November 2025, up about 35% from 5,518 the prior year, according to a March 11 letter from acting Assistant Director Ted Groves to congressional judiciary and intelligence leaders. Section 702 allows the government to collect foreign intelligence communications involving non-U.S. persons overseas, but Americans’ communications can be incidentally swept into the same databases and later searched by analysts using selectors such as names, phone numbers, or email addresses.
The increase lands as Congress again debates reauthorization of the surveillance authority, which is scheduled to expire on April 20, and as civil-liberties concerns remain central to the policy fight. The FBI did not publicly explain the rise in searches, but the letter said the share of queries that returned either content or non-content Section 702 information fell from 38% in 2024 to 28% in 2025, underscoring ongoing questions about the scope, utility, and oversight of warrantless access to incidentally collected Americans’ data.
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