Sponsors (2)
The bill increases transparency and judicial oversight of electronic‑surveillance practices and provides some funding and standardized reporting, but it also creates new compliance costs, implementation uncertainty, and potential risks to investigations and individuals' privacy.
Court users, the public, researchers, and journalists gain standardized, machine-readable public reporting and searchable access to many criminal surveillance applications, orders, and inventories, increasing transparency about how electronic‑surveillance authorities are used.
Judges, courts, and oversight bodies receive clearer reporting, notification, and procedural requirements (including mandatory reports of unauthorized disclosures), improving judicial oversight and accountability of providers and law enforcement.
Subscribers/customers are more likely to receive prior notice before many law‑enforcement searches of their electronic communications and providers must report unauthorized access, strengthening individual privacy protections and chances to seek counsel or challenge searches.
Law enforcement and intelligence activities face operational and national‑security risks because publishing orders, inventories, or detailed reporting (including provider and requesting‑agency names) could reveal investigative targets or methods.
Courts, providers, and taxpayers will face substantial compliance, IT, redaction, cybersecurity, and administrative costs to build secure, searchable public systems and meet reporting requirements.
People named in surveillance applications risk exposure of sensitive personal information if redaction rules or rule changes are insufficient, and notice can be delayed (including repeated extensions), reducing timely ability to challenge searches.
Based on analysis of 10 sections of legislative text.
Introduced February 26, 2026 by Ted Lieu · Last progress February 26, 2026
Requires courts to make criminal surveillance applications, orders, and inventories available to the public in searchable electronic form, tightens rules about when law enforcement can secretly obtain electronic communications or records without notifying the subscriber, and forces courts and judges to report routine data about such orders to a central office. Creates a small federal grant program and authorizes modest funding to help State and Tribal courts upgrade systems to comply, sets phased effective dates (generally two years, with up to four years for courts lacking electronic dockets), and adds procedures for courts to delay notice for limited periods when disclosure would harm an investigation.