Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act lets US intelligence agencies collect communications from foreigners abroad without a warrant, and routinely sweeps in Americans’ emails, messages, and calls in the process.

The authority for this program is set to expire Friday, June 12th, 2026, at midnight. As we wrote earlier this week, Congress has been kicking the ball down the road for months now—temporarily postponing the expiration of the mass surveillance authority Section 702 of FISA in hopes that some consensus on a longer reauthorization could be reached. 

EFF has said for decades, every time this program is up for renewal: Section 702 should require a warrant before the Federal Bureau of Investigation can look at digital communications collected from Americans. If not, we should let the whole thing expire. And this time, it has, at least for a little while. 

Ironically, we have Bill Pulte to thank for this (probably temporary) reprieve. Earlier this month, Trump on Tuesday named Pulte – currently director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – to replace current DNI Tulsi Gabbard, who announced her resignation last month. As has been widely reported, Pulte lacks any intelligence, military, or congressional experience. Senate Democrats responded by refusing to move forward with their version of a bill to reauthorize Section 702. Similarly, the House refused to approve even a short-term renewal of the program. 

However, the potential for abuse of this program is not limited to one individual or one administration. And if Congress is this concerned about one particular individual having access to Americans’ most sensitive information, the responsible thing to do is to put more transparency, accountability, and oversight into the structure of this program. 

Members on both sides of the aisle understand this. As we have seen several times this year already, the appetite for reform is stronger than ever. We hope to continue to see strong bipartisan opposition in Congress to renewing Section 702 without a warrant requirement for backdoor searches. Until then, the authority for this program should remain expired. 

Two years ago, Congress passed the “Reforming Intelligence and Securing America” Act (RISAA) that included nominal reforms to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The bill unfortunately included some problematic expansions of the law—but it also included a relatively big victory for civil liberties advocates: Section 702 authorities were only extended for two years, allowing Congress to continue the important work of negotiating a warrant requirement for Americans as well as some other critical reforms. 

However, Congress clearly did not continue this work. In fact, it now appears that Congress is poised to consider another extension of this program without even attempting to include necessary and common sense reforms. Most notably, Congress is not considering a requirement to obtain a warrant before looking at data on U.S. persons that was indiscriminately and warrantlessly collected. House Speaker Mike Johnson confirmed that “the plan is to move a clean extension of FISA … for at least 18 months.” 

Even more disappointing, House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, who has previously been a champion of both the warrant requirement and closing the data broker loophole, told the press he would vote for a clean extension of FISA, claiming that RISAA included enough reforms for the moment.

It’s important to note RISAA was just a reauthorization of this mass surveillance program with a long history of abuse. Prior to the 2024 reauthorization, Section 702 was already misused to run improper queries on peaceful protesters, federal and state lawmakers, Congressional staff, thousands of campaign donors, journalists, and a judge reporting civil rights violations by local police. RISAA further expanded the government’s authority by allowing it to compel a much larger group of people and providers into assisting with this surveillance. As we said when it passed, overall, RISAA is a travesty for Americans who deserve basic constitutional rights and privacy whether they are communicating with people and services inside or outside of the US.

Section 702 should not be reauthorized without any additional safeguards or oversight. Fortunately, there are currently three reform bills for Congress to consider: SAFE, PLEWSA, and GSRA. While none of these bills are perfect, they are all significantly better than the status quo, and should be considered instead of a bill that attempts no reform at all. 

Mass spying—accessing a massive amount of communications by and with Americans first and sorting out targets second and secretly—has always been a problem for our rights.  It was a problem at first when President George W. Bush authorized it in secret without Congressional or court oversight. And it remained a problem even after the passage of Section 702 in 2008 created the possibility of  some oversight. Congress was right that this surveillance is dangerous, and that's why it set Section 702 up for regular reconsideration. That reconsideration has not occurred, even as the circumstances of the NSA, Justice Department, and FBI leadership, have radically changed. Reform is long overdue, and now it's urgent.  

State and federal lawmakers have introduced multiple proposals in 2025 to curtail or outright block children and teenagers from accessing legal content on the internet. These lawmakers argue that internet and social media platforms have an obligation to censor or suppress speech that they consider “harmful” to young people. Unfortunately, in many of these legislative debates, lawmakers are not listening to kids, whose experiences online are overwhelmingly more positive than what lawmakers claim. 

Fortunately, EFF has spent the past year trying to make sure that lawmakers hear young people’s voices. We have also been reminding lawmakers that minors, like everyone else, have First Amendment rights to express themselves online. 

These rights extend to a young person’s ability to use social media both to speak for themselves and access the speech of others online. Young people also have the right to control how they access this speech, including a personalized feed and other digestible and organized ways. Preventing teenagers from accessing the same internet and social media channels that adults use is a clear violation of their right to free expression. 

On top of violating minors’ First Amendment rights, these laws also actively harm minors who rely on the internet to find community, find resources to end abuse, or access information about their health. Cutting off internet access acutely harms LGBTQ+ youth and others who lack familial or community support where they live. These laws also empower the state to decide what information is acceptable for all young people, overriding parents’ choices. 

Additionally, all of the laws that would attempt to create a “kid friendly” internet and an “adults-only” internet are a threat to everyone, adults included. These mandates encourage an adoption of invasive and dangerous age-verification technology. Beyond creepy, these systems incentivize more data collection, and increase the risk of data breaches and other harms. Requiring everyone online to provide their ID or other proof of their age could block legal adults from accessing lawful speech if they don’t have the right form of ID. Furthermore, this trend infringes on people’s right to be anonymous online, and creates a chilling effect which may deter people from joining certain services or speaking on certain topics

EFF has lobbied against these bills at both the state and federal level, and we have also filed briefs in support of several lawsuits to protect the First Amendment Rights of minors. We will continue to advocate for the rights of everyone online – including minors – in the future.

This article is part of our Year in Review series. Read other articles about the fight for digital rights in 2025.

Earlier this year, both chambers of Congress passed the TAKE IT DOWN Act. This bill, while well-intentioned, gives powerful people a new legal tool to force online platforms to remove lawful speech that they simply don't like. 

The bill, sponsored by Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rep. Maria Salazar (R-FL), sought to speed up the removal of troubling online content: non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII). The spread of NCII is a serious problem, as is digitally altered NCII, sometimes called “deepfakes.” That’s why 48 states have specific laws criminalizing the distribution of NCII, in addition to the long-existing defamation, harassment, and extortion statutes—all of which can be brought to bear against those who abuse NCII. Congress can and should protect victims of NCII by enforcing and improving these laws. 

Unfortunately, TAKE IT DOWN takes another approach: it creates an unneeded notice-and-takedown system that threatens free expression, user privacy, and due process, without meaningfully addressing the problem it seeks to solve. 

While Congress was still debating the bill, EFF, along with the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), Authors Guild, Demand Progress Action, Fight for the Future, Freedom of the Press Foundation, New America’s Open Technology Institute, Public Knowledge, Restore The Fourth, SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change, TechFreedom, and Woodhull Freedom Foundation, sent a letter to the Senate outlining our concerns with the proposal. 

First, TAKE IT DOWN’s removal provision applies to a much broader category of content—potentially any images involving intimate or sexual content—than the narrower NCII definitions found elsewhere in the law. We worry that bad-faith actors will use the law’s expansive definition to remove lawful speech that is not NCII and may not even contain sexual content. 

Worse, the law contains no protections against frivolous or bad-faith takedown requests. Lawful content—including satire, journalism, and political speech—could be wrongly censored. The law requires that apps and websites remove content within 48 hours or face significant legal risks. That ultra-tight deadline means that small apps or websites will have to comply so quickly to avoid legal risk, that they won’t be able to investigate or verify claims. 

Finally, there are no legal protections for providers when they believe a takedown request was sent in bad faith to target lawful speech. TAKE IT DOWN is a one-way censorship ratchet, and its fast timeline discourages providers from standing up for their users’ free speech rights. 

This new law could lead to the use of automated filters that tend to flag legal content, from commentary to news reporting. Communications providers that offer users end-to-end encrypted messaging, meanwhile, may be served with notices they simply cannot comply with, given the fact that these providers can’t view the contents of messages on their platforms. Platforms could respond by abandoning encryption entirely in order to be able to monitor content, turning private conversations into surveilled spaces.

We asked for several changes to protect legitimate speech that is not NCII, and to include common-sense safeguards for encryption. Thousands of EFF members joined us by writing similar messages to their Senators and Representatives. That resulted in several attempts to offer common-sense amendments during the Committee process. 

However, Congress passed the bill without those needed changes, and it was signed into law in May 2025. The main takedown provisions of the bill will take effect in 2026. We’ll be pushing online platforms to be transparent about the content they take down because of this law, and will be on the watch for takedowns that overreach and censor lawful speech. 

This article is part of our Year in Review series. Read other articles about the fight for digital rights in 2025.