WASHINGTON, June 1, 2026 — Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., renewed his push Monday to end warrantless government surveillance of American citizens, posting on X that intelligence agencies “spy on you without a warrant, then hide behind a secret court” — and highlighting his Fourth Amendment Restoration and Protection Act as the legislative remedy.
“They spy on you without a warrant, then hide behind a secret court. That’s not how the Constitution works,” Paul wrote on X. “My Fourth Amendment Restoration and Protection Act stops warrantless surveillance of Americans.”
“No secret, unaccountable court should be allowed to authorize spying on American citizens,” Paul has said previously. “My Fourth Amendment Restoration and Protection Act would exempt Americans from the FISA process and ensure both constitutional rights and national security are protected.”
What the Bill Does
The Fourth Amendment Restoration and Protection Act would ensure that Americans cannot be subjected to government surveillance upon the order of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court — known as the FISC — or under Executive Order 12333, the Reagan-era directive that governs intelligence collection outside the United States but has been used to justify surveillance touching American citizens’ communications.
The bill would require the government to obtain a traditional warrant from an Article III federal court — subject to the full Fourth Amendment standard of probable cause of a crime — before surveilling any American citizen. It would close the so-called “backdoor search” loophole under Section 702 of FISA, which allows the government to collect the communications of foreign targets and then search that database for Americans’ communications without obtaining a separate warrant.
The legislation would also prohibit intelligence and law enforcement agencies from purchasing Americans’ data from commercial data brokers as a way of circumventing warrant requirements — a practice the government has used to obtain location data, browsing history, and other sensitive information without going to a judge.
The Secret Court Problem
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, operates almost entirely in secret. It meets in a classified facility inside the Justice Department, hears only from government lawyers, does not allow the targets of surveillance to appear or challenge warrants, and issues classified opinions that are rarely made public. Unlike traditional Article III courts, its proceedings are one-sided by design — structured for speed and secrecy in foreign intelligence matters.
Paul’s core argument is that this system, designed to target foreign adversaries, has been systematically turned against American citizens. “The Constitution requires that a judge ascertain ‘probable cause’ of a crime, and the accused ultimately gets to challenge the warrant,” Paul has written. “FISA warrants ask that a judge ascertain ‘probable cause’ of someone being an agent of a foreign country, and the accused is not allowed to challenge or even know of the warrant. Anything short of guaranteeing that each and every citizen gets the protection of the Fourth Amendment is an insult to the Constitution.”
Section 702 — The Central Battleground
The surveillance authority Paul’s bill targets most directly is Section 702 of FISA — a provision that authorizes the NSA to collect the communications of foreign targets located outside the United States, without a warrant, in bulk. Because Americans frequently communicate with foreign targets, their messages are swept up in this collection. Intelligence agencies can then search that database for Americans’ communications using a process Paul and other critics call a “backdoor search” — effectively conducting a warrantless search of an American’s private communications by accessing a database collected under a foreign intelligence authority.
The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board has documented hundreds of thousands of such queries annually. In 2022, the FBI conducted approximately 3.4 million searches of Section 702 data for Americans’ communications, according to declassified government reports.
Section 702 was reauthorized in April 2024 for two years under the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act. Paul opposed that reauthorization, arguing it expanded rather than restricted government surveillance powers and failed to close the backdoor search loophole. The authority is set to expire again in April 2026, making Paul’s bill timely as Congress begins to consider what comes next.
A Decades-Long Fight
Paul’s push against warrantless surveillance dates to his first Senate term. In 2013, he filed a class-action lawsuit against the Obama administration over the NSA’s bulk phone metadata collection program — a program revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. In 2015, he conducted a nearly eleven-hour talking filibuster on the Senate floor against reauthorization of the Patriot Act, forcing its temporary expiration. In 2018, he threatened to filibuster reauthorization of FISA Section 702 and was one of only a handful of Republicans to vote against it.
His bill also draws on the legacy of the Church Committee — the 1975 Senate investigation that exposed the CIA’s COINTELPRO program, NSA mass surveillance, and FBI targeting of civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King Jr. FISA itself was originally enacted in 1978 as a response to those abuses, intended to create a court that would provide meaningful oversight of foreign intelligence surveillance. Paul argues the FISC has instead become a rubber stamp that enables the same abuses the Church Committee documented.
Bipartisan Roots
Paul’s surveillance reform push has attracted rare bipartisan support over the years. He has co-sponsored legislation with Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and one of the Senate’s most consistent privacy advocates. Together they introduced the Fourth Amendment is Not For Sale Act, which would prohibit intelligence and law enforcement agencies from purchasing Americans’ data from commercial brokers — a provision incorporated into Paul’s current bill.
Paul chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, giving him significant oversight leverage over the intelligence community and government surveillance programs. His committee has jurisdiction over the executive branch agencies — including the Department of Homeland Security — that conduct domestic surveillance and collect data on American citizens.
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