Sponsors (4)
Introduced March 12, 2026 by Ronald Lee Wyden · Last progress March 12, 2026
The bill significantly strengthens privacy, oversight, and transparency protections for people in the U.S. while imposing substantial new compliance, reporting, and procedural constraints that increase costs and could delay or limit some national-security and law‑enforcement intelligence activities.
Nearly all people in the U.S. (covered persons) gain stronger warrant-like protections for content, location, web browsing, and search data—federal officers generally must obtain a warrant or meet narrow emergency/order exceptions before querying or accessing this information.
Federal purchase and use of commercial brokered personal data (including biometric and location data) is restricted and improperly obtained brokered data generally cannot be used in prosecutions, reducing government access to sensitive commercial profiles.
Agencies must log queries and accesses, follow strict retention/destruction rules (generally five-year limits), and submit to audits—improving accountability and reducing long-term storage of Americans' data.
Federal intelligence and law-enforcement access to data could be constrained—narrowed query rules, strict retention/destruction, and limits on emergency uses may impede timely intelligence and criminal investigations.
Agencies and private providers face substantial new administrative, technical, and compliance costs (logging, audits, reporting, retention changes, provider-specific orders and certifications), raising operational expenses and diverting resources.
New procedural requirements, expanded amicus and declassification processes, and emergency reporting obligations can create delays in time-sensitive operations and give the Executive Branch discretion (AG/DNI delay authority) to postpone implementation.
Based on analysis of 11 sections of legislative text.
Limits federal warrantless queries and purchases of certain commercial personal data, extends privacy protections to state/local agencies, requires warrants for tracking/vehicle data access, and strengthens oversight and reporting.
Makes broad changes to surveillance and privacy law to limit federal warrantless searches, restrict use of commercial data about people in the United States, extend electronic‑privacy protections to state and local agencies, and strengthen oversight and reporting. It creates new legal definitions, bars certain government queries of communications and other sensitive data about U.S. persons or people known or believed to be in the U.S., and sets out exceptions, minimization, and destruction rules. Also requires warrants for many tracking and vehicle-data accesses, directs audits and new reporting by Inspectors General and intelligence bodies, expands public reporting from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the Director of National Intelligence, and gives the Attorney General limited authority to delay implementation while agencies build technical systems or train staff.