HR7816-119

What This Bill Does

The Protect Liberty and End Warrantless Surveillance Act generally bars Federal personnel from querying Section 702-acquired information to find communications or other information of or about U.S. persons unless a court order, qualifying emergency authorization, imminent-death-or-serious-harm emergency, case-specific consent, or tightly limited known-cyber-threat-signature query applies. Emergency-derived information generally can be used only for the precipitating threat. Queries, denials, and compliance receive FISA-court and congressional reporting, and information from an unapproved emergency query is suppressed and restricted.

The query definition covers manual or automated retrieval using identifiers, purpose, or reason to believe U.S.-person information will be found. Metadata results cannot bootstrap access to otherwise prohibited communications, and the protections reach federated and mixed datasets unless a query can be limited to non-702 data.

On December 31, 2026, the bill narrows recently expanded definitions of electronic communication service providers. Until the same date, directives to providers in the temporary expanded category are limited to the service type addressed in specified FISA opinions. The Attorney General and Director of National Intelligence must describe directives to the FISA court and Congress, supply equipment and access details before collection, support possible court review, complete a declassification review, report quarterly counts, and provide relevant court opinions.

FISA courts generally must appoint an amicus, including a privacy or civil-liberties expert when appropriate, for novel legal questions, sensitive investigations, new technologies, programmatic surveillance, significant civil-liberties issues, or matters involving U.S.-person activity unless the court makes contrary findings. Sensitive matters include officials, candidates, political or religious organizations, prominent members, and news media. Amici may raise issues, seek appellate certification, obtain applications and unredacted decisions, request other material, and access classified records when eligible.

A separate, unstored section extends FISA Title VII authorities through April 20, 2028. Thus, the measure restricts use and oversight while preserving the underlying surveillance authorities for about two more years.

The Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale title bars law-enforcement and intelligence agencies from buying U.S.-person communications, account, device, location, or reidentifiable records from data brokers and from receiving purchased data through another agency. Illegally acquired data and derivative evidence are excluded, and the Attorney General must impose minimization. Government must obtain the same court order, under the most stringent applicable standard, when compelling a third party to disclose data that would require an order if held by a communications provider.

The Act extends confidentiality and demand rules to intermediary and broadly defined online service providers, including information services, shared server systems, libraries, and educational institutions. It also makes FISA and specified surveillance statutes the exclusive means for domestic foreign-intelligence acquisition of U.S.-person records, location, browsing, search, and warrant-protected information, while preserving expressly authorized or exclusively foreign non-U.S.-person collection.

Finally, emergency assistance by a communications provider receives civil immunity only with a qualifying written certification and only until the earliest of a denied order, acquisition of the sought communication, or 48 hours. The bill does not end Section 702 or Title VII immediately, create a general private damages action, or ban defensive cyber and life-safety emergency queries.

Who Benefits and How

U.S. persons, communications users, location-data subjects, journalists, political and religious groups, and online-service users gain warrants, purchase bans, suppression, minimization, adversarial FISA participation, provider confidentiality, and narrower emergency immunity. Communications and intermediary providers gain clearer limits on directives and demands. Courts and Congress gain detailed oversight information.

Who Bears the Burden and How

The FBI, NSA, other intelligence elements, law-enforcement agencies, Justice, and the DNI must obtain orders, document exceptions, stop data purchases, segregate federated datasets, minimize violations, and provide recurring reports. FISA courts and amici face additional reviews and access work. Data brokers lose government sales. Online and intermediary providers assume expanded confidentiality and disclosure duties. At the same time, U.S. persons continue to bear underlying Title VII surveillance risk through April 20, 2028.

Key Provisions

• Prohibits most warrantless U.S.-person Section 702 queries.
• Preserves narrow emergency, consent, and defensive-cyber exceptions.
• Restricts use of emergency-query results.
• Covers metadata and federated datasets.
• Narrows expanded provider definitions on December 31, 2026.
• Adds temporary directive notice and review through that date.
• Expands mandatory FISA amicus participation and access.
• Extends FISA Title VII through April 20, 2028.
• Prohibits government purchase of covered data-broker records.
• Excludes illegally purchased data and derivative evidence.
• Requires court orders for comparable third-party demands.
• Expands privacy duties to intermediary and online service providers.
• Makes FISA the exclusive domestic foreign-intelligence acquisition path.
• Limits emergency provider immunity to certified and time-limited aid.
• Creates no immediate repeal of Section 702 or general damages action.