Updates
FBI’s Warrantless Section 702 Searches Violated Fourth Amendment, Court Finds
January 22, 2025

Last night, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York held that warrantless queries of Americans’ communications collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act violated the Fourth Amendment. This landmark decision is a critical victory against warrantless surveillance of Americans.
Jeramie Scott, EPIC Senior Counsel & Director of the Project on Surveillance Oversight, released the following statement regarding the landmark decision:
“The Court has reaffirmed what we already knew but what the government has fought so hard to deny: Warrantless searches of Americans’ information incidentally collected under FISA section 702 is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. Section 702 is a broad surveillance authority and this opinion reinforces the need for Congress to reform it prior to any reauthorization.”
Section 702 authorizes surveillance programs targeting non-U.S. persons reasonably believed to be outside the U.S. to acquire “foreign intelligence information.” The court’s opinion addresses the FBI’s queries of communications “incidentally” gathered from the Defendant, Mr. Agron Hasbajrami, during a 702 investigation. The government only revealed these queries after Mr. Hasbajrami, a permanent U.S. resident, had served his sentence. Mr. Hasbajrami moved to suppress the Section 702 evidence.
The court’s decision builds on the Second Circuit’s 2019 ruling that queries of databases containing Section 702-acquired information on people in the U.S. are separate Fourth Amendment events. The Court argued that no warrant requirement “would effectively allow law enforcement to amass a repository of communications under Section 702-including those of U.S. persons-that can later be searched on demand without limitation.” While the District Court found that the FBI’s Section 702 queries violated the Fourth Amendment, it denied Mr. Hasbajrami’s motion to suppress the resulting evidence on other grounds.
EPIC has been a staunch advocate for calling for broad reform of Section 702, working as part of a bipartisan coalition of civil society groups. EPIC published a blog series— including one on warrantless 702 searches—explaining Section 702 and why it must be reformed.

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