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Editorial: A bipartisan defense of the Fourth Amendment

March 22, 2026

While many Americans have grown complacent about the federal surveillance state, the United States Constitution is clear. If law enforcement agents want to search “persons, houses, papers, and effects,” they should get a warrant.

This past week, however, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel told the United States Senate that his agency is exploiting a loophole to gather information on Americans.

“We do purchase commercially available information that’s consistent with the Constitution and the laws under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and it has led to some valuable intelligence for us,” he said.

In plain English, that means data harvested by the very apps and websites Americans rely on to navigate modern life, then sold to the highest bidder — including the government.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, decried this practice. “Doing that without a warrant is an outrageous end run around the Fourth Amendment; it’s particularly dangerous given the use of artificial intelligence to comb through massive amounts of private information,” Wyden said at the hearing.

Fortunately, Sen. Wyden, along with Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, has partnered with Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California and Republican Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio to push back on this practice and others from federal agencies trying to skirt around constitutional constraints.

The group re-introduced the “Government Surveillance Reform Act,” which would ban both the interception and purchasing of constitutionally protected information without a warrant.

According to a press release from Lofgren’s office, the bill closes a much abused backdoor search loophole and “requires the federal government to get a warrant to access Americans’ private communications gathered under Section 702, with important exceptions for emergency situations.”

It also “requires federal law enforcement to get a warrant to surveil Americans’ location information, web browsing data, search and chatbot records, and car onboard and telematics data.”

This isn’t just an FBI problem. From the DEA and the Department of Defense to — perhaps most alarmingly — the IRS, federal agencies have systematically bypassed the Fourth Amendment by simply opening their checkbooks.

Additionally, this legislation “prohibits using surveillance on foreigners overseas through Section 702 as a pretext for gathering data on Americans.”

That is a practice long abused over the years despite obviously being unconstitutional.

The proposal, backed by American Civil Liberties Union on one end and Americans for Prosperity on the other, is desperately needed as a check on federal agencies and a recommitment to constitutional rights.

Government agencies of course want to get away with as much as they can. But this is America, where the rights of the people are supposed to come first.

“The Government Surveillance Reform Act is an important step toward restoring the balance between national security and the civil liberties the Constitution was designed to protect,” said Jason Pye, vice president of the Due Process Institute, in support of the bill. “For too long, federal surveillance authorities have created opportunities for the warrantless collection and misuse of Americans’ communications.”

With this year marking 250 years of the great American experiment, it’s time for America to get back to its founding principles.

Rein in the surveillance state.

Orange County Register

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Editorial: A bipartisan defense of the Fourth Amendment

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