Sponsors (2)
The bill increases transparency, notice, and standardized reporting to strengthen judicial oversight and public accountability of electronic surveillance, but those gains come with tradeoffs in privacy risk, potential harm to sensitive investigations, and added administrative and fiscal burdens on courts, providers, and taxpayers.
People whose electronic data or communications are accessed by government (subscribers/customers/general public) will more often receive timely notice when their content or records are disclosed, and courts face tighter limits on delayed notice, increasing individual transparency about government access.
The public, researchers, journalists, and civil‑rights organizations gain substantially improved transparency and oversight of surveillance through searchable/published orders, aggregated counts, and standardized, machine‑readable reporting, enabling analysis of surveillance patterns and judicial accountability.
Judges and courts will operate under clearer standards, time limits, and judicial‑review/redaction requirements for delaying notice and non‑disclosure, reducing indefinite secrecy and enabling targeted protection of sensitive information through oversight and redaction.
Making surveillance applications, orders, inventories, or detailed metadata publicly accessible risks exposing sensitive personal data about defendants, witnesses, or victims if redaction fails or is insufficient.
Detailed disclosures and publication of orders, provider inventories, or reporting metadata could reveal investigative techniques, targets, or sources and thereby harm ongoing investigations or national‑security operations.
Implementing searchable public access, inventories, reporting, and new procedural requirements will impose material administrative and compliance costs on courts, providers, and the AOUSC, potentially diverting limited resources and slowing processing.
Based on analysis of 10 sections of legislative text.
Requires machine-readable publication and annual judge-level reporting of many criminal surveillance orders, narrows delayed notice, mandates inventories, and funds implementation grants.
Introduced February 26, 2026 by Ted Lieu · Last progress February 26, 2026
Creates new public, machine-readable rules for many criminal surveillance applications, orders, and inventories; tightens notice rules to people whose data are accessed; limits how long notice can be delayed; and requires judges to file annual, machine-readable reports about surveillance orders. It phases in changes (generally two years, four years for some State/Tribal courts), requires the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts to publish public reports and forms, and funds a five-year grant program (capped at $25M) plus $1M for the AOUSC to help courts implement the changes. Also updates court procedural rules to require inventories when unauthorized disclosures or searches occur, creates judicial reporting and public summary requirements, and authorizes funding and oversight steps (including deadlines for AOUSC forms and limits on pre-enactment orders). A severability clause preserves remaining provisions if any part is found unconstitutional.