17 Attorneys General Tell Congress: Stop Mass Surveillance

The Data Broker Loophole Is Worse Than You Think

Federal agencies have found a simple workaround to the Fourth Amendment: just buy the surveillance data.

The letter to Congress spells it out. Agencies are "exploiting a data broker loophole" to obtain detailed information about Americans' movements, associations, political activity, and daily lives: information they'd otherwise need a warrant to get.

The examples cited are massive in scale: billions of airline ticketing records purchased from commercial brokers. Mobile location data tracking where Americans go, who they meet, what they do. All without judicial oversight.

Why bother getting a warrant when you can just swipe a credit card?

What the 17 Attorneys General Are Demanding

The letter went to the leadership of both the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. Here's what they want:

1. Close the data broker loophole. End federal agencies' ability to purchase commercially available data that reveals sensitive information about Americans. If the government wants your location history, they should have to prove probable cause to a judge.

2. Require warrants for digital data. Browsing activity, search queries, location information: all of it should require judicial authorization before federal access.

3. Stop the foreign intelligence workaround. Prevent intelligence agencies from using foreign surveillance authorities to circumvent domestic limits. This targets FISA abuse, where agencies claim they're surveilling foreign targets but "incidentally" collect vast amounts of American data.

4. Delete everything and burn the AI. Mandate deletion of unlawfully collected data AND the AI algorithms trained on it. This is a big one. If the government trained a predictive model on illegally purchased location data, that model needs to go.

5. National transparency standards. Establish accountability rules for data brokers. Right now, most Americans have no idea their data is being sold to federal agencies.

The Coalition

Seventeen attorneys general signed onto this letter. California's Rob Bonta leads the coalition, joined by:

• Colorado
• Connecticut
• Hawaii
• Illinois
• Maine
• Maryland
• Massachusetts
• Michigan
• Minnesota
• Nevada
• New Jersey
• New Mexico
• Oregon
• Vermont
• Virginia
• Washington

Yes, Virginia (a state with a Republican attorney general) is on this list. That's significant. State AGs don't often align across party lines on surveillance issues. The message to Congress: this isn't a partisan complaint.

Why This Letter, Why Now

Bonta has been on a tear against federal data practices. Earlier this month, California won a court order blocking the Trump administration's attempt to use SNAP benefits data for what Bonta called a "mass surveillance agenda."

But this letter goes bigger. It's not just about one agency or one dataset. It's a systemic critique of how the federal government has weaponized commercial data markets to build surveillance capabilities that would be unconstitutional if done directly.

The timing matters too. Congress is staring at an April 20 deadline on FISA Section 702 reauthorization. The program allowing warrantless surveillance of foreign targets, which "incidentally" sweeps up American communications, needs congressional action to continue.

These 17 AGs are essentially saying: don't just renew 702. Fix the entire broken system.

What Would Actually Change

If Congress acted on all five demands:

No more data shopping. DHS couldn't buy Venntel location data to track immigrants. The IRS couldn't purchase Babel Street subscriptions to monitor taxpayers. The FBI couldn't use commercially purchased data as a warrant workaround.

Warrants for digital surveillance. Before accessing your search history or location records, agencies would need to convince a judge there's probable cause you committed a crime.

AI accountability. Machine learning models trained on improperly collected data would have to be destroyed. This could force agencies to rebuild surveillance systems from scratch, with properly obtained data.

Broker transparency. Data companies would face federal standards requiring disclosure of government sales. You'd finally know who's selling your data to whom.

Will Congress Listen?

The letter went to both Republican and Democratic committee leadership. Whether it gets traction depends on the FISA fight playing out this month.

Senator Tom Cotton wants a "clean" Section 702 extension, no reforms. Privacy hawks like Senators Wyden and Durbin want warrant requirements. This AG coalition is throwing weight behind the reformers.

Seventeen state attorneys general telling Congress to require warrants isn't nothing. These are law enforcement officials, the people who usually want more surveillance powers, not fewer. When the cops say you've gone too far, maybe you've gone too far.

Sources

• California Attorney General: Bonta Calls on Congress to Stop Government Mass Surveillance of Americans
• Project On Government Oversight: Fact Sheet - Closing the Data Broker Loophole
• Brennan Center: Congress Must Close Data Broker Loophole
• California AG: Court Blocks Data Grab in SNAP Surveillance Case

Related Coverage

• FISA 702: 19 Days Left: The AGs' data broker demands remain unanswered with 19 days to expiration
• The Data Broker Loophole Explained: How federal agencies bypass the Fourth Amendment to buy your location data.
• NPR: "Your Data Is Everywhere. The Government Is Buying It.": FBI Director won't commit to stop buying location data, Anthropic warns of AI-powered mass surveillance.
• FISA 702 Countdown: 29 Days Until Sunset as Congress Deadlocks: The surveillance reauthorization fight where data broker reforms could be attached.
• Why Are Democrats Helping Trump Keep Warrantless Surveillance?: 23 days left, some Democrats may enable a clean extension.
• California's Data Broker Strike Force: Bonta's state-level enforcement actions against data sellers.
• DOGE Whistleblower: "God-Level Access" to Every American's Data: Another example of federal data access that bypasses normal oversight.
• Wyden-Lee Reform Bill: What the Government Surveillance Reform Act Would Do: The warrant-requirement legislation backed by the privacy hawks named in this letter.