A federal district court has delivered a pivotal ruling that strikes at the heart of unchecked government surveillance. In the criminal case United States v. Hasbajrami, the court determined that backdoor searches of vast databases containing Americans’ private communications — collected under Section 702 — typically require a warrant. This judgment comes after more than a decade of legal battles and follows the Second Circuit Court of Appeals’ 2019 finding that such searches constitute “separate Fourth Amendment events,” leaving it to the lower court to address the warrant requirement. That question has now been resolved.

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) grants the intelligence community the authority to collect communications between foreign targets, ostensibly for national security purposes.

More: Section 702 of The Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act Makes a Mockery of The Fourth Amendment

However, when these exchanges involve individuals on US soil, their communications are also intercepted and stored. Federal agencies have claimed that accessing this data for searches doesn’t require additional judicial oversight. For years privacy groups have argued this practice violates the Fourth Amendment. Now, a court has finally concurred.

The case revolves around Agron Hasbajrami, a US resident arrested at JFK airport in 2011 as he prepared to travel to Pakistan. He was accused of providing material support to terrorists. The government later disclosed that its evidence included emails between Hasbajrami and an unnamed foreigner allegedly “linked” to terrorist groups. These emails had been warrantlessly collected through Section 702 programs and later searched — again without a warrant — using terms associated with Hasbajrami.

While Section 702 permits the surveillance of communications involving foreign nationals, the court ruled that such a broad “foreign intelligence exception” cannot routinely override the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement when those communications are searched by law enforcement.

More: FISA Court Shows the FBI Illegally Searched Data on a Senator, a State Senator, and a Judge

The court also found that the privacy invasion inherent in accessing sensitive personal communications made such searches “unreasonable,” even if an exception could be applied. Notably, the FBI conducted 3.4 million warrantless searches of Section 702 data involving US persons in 2021 alone.

This ruling highlights a long-standing issue: the government’s expansive interpretation of its powers under Section 702, which effectively operates as a “finders keepers” loophole for accessing Americans’ private communications. Although the law primarily targets foreign intelligence, data involving US-based individuals is swept up and stored in massive databases that federal agencies have searched with little oversight.

For years, both Congress and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) have allowed this pattern to persist. Congress has reauthorized Section 702 multiple times, despite clear evidence of misuse by the FBI and intelligence agencies.

Meanwhile, the FISC has repeatedly dismissed challenges, asserting that backdoor searches violate constitutional rights and allowing agencies to sidestep even the minimal safeguards in place.

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