Washington Still Bows to the Surveillance State

[Celerity]

Despite some bipartisan pushback, much of Congress remains unwilling to take on the national security establishment.

https://prospect.org/2026/06/01/washington-still-bows-to-surveillance-state-congress-fisa-license-plate-readers/



In the post-9/11 political environment, it was unthinkable for members of Congress to challenge the intelligence community’s justifications for expanding or maintaining broad surveillance authority. Lawmakers risked being labeled as a friend to terrorists for failing to align with the Bush administration’s national security priorities. Russ Feingold knowingly took that risk in October 2001. The Democratic senator from Wisconsin was the only member of the upper chamber to vote against the PATRIOT Act, famously saying in a Senate floor speech: “There is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists.” Feingold wouldn’t be vindicated until after National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed the agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ communications data in 2013. Even though Feingold would lose re-election the following year, the Snowden disclosures marked what seemed like a turning point in the debate over government surveillance.

Yet while civil liberties–focused critiques gradually made their way into the mainstream, intelligence hawks in Congress have continued to set the terms of acceptable debate on privacy issues. This fealty to the national security establishment was on full display during the last fight to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 2024, and throughout the ongoing slog to extend the government’s warrantless spying program, which now expires June 12. After two short-term extensions, no path forward to continue the program, either with no changes or with civil liberties reforms, has emerged. But ending the program is not seen as an option either.

Hajar Hammado, senior policy adviser at the pro–civil liberties grassroots advocacy organization Demand Progress, thinks something has changed in surveillance politics. “We’re living in a very different world now than we lived in during the last FISA reauthorization debate,” Hammado said. “Americans across the country [are] really concerned about this, and that’s translating into members of Congress … that are themselves very concerned about the future of surveillance, and especially AI-powered surveillance.” There is indeed a transpartisan consensus of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans on government surveillance, one that is firmly rooted in the need to protect Americans’ constitutional rights in an era of rapid technological advancement. But despite this momentum, Congress seems to be struggling to reconcile concerns over unchecked surveillance with its long-standing deference to the intelligence community.

For example, on May 21, Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, offered an amendment alongside Congressional Progressive Caucus member Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-IL) at the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s markup to block federal highway funding for states and cities that use automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) for any purpose other than tolling. As my colleague Whitney Curry Wimbish reported, ALPRs snap pictures of vehicles as they drive by, and the pictures go into a searchable database that police officers can use to find where a car was, and when. ALPRs, which have been a fixture of the borderlands for years, take video and stills of passing vehicles, noting the license plate, make, model, and unique identifiers like bumper stickers and dents. Flock Safety, a leading ALPR software company, has gone from operating a few hundred of these devices in January 2024 to nearly 100,000 today.

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