THE GOVERNMENT DOES NOT NEED A SEASON PASS TO YOUR PRIVATE LIFE.

JUSTICE · POLITICAL JUSTICE

Published by Langhorne P. Breedlove

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2026 · 1:06 AM ET

Tags: Political Justice · Privacy · Surveillance · Civil Liberties · Intelligence Oversight

Dear fellow American proletariat: Once upon a time, following somebody around town required a person in sensible shoes. Today a government agency may have access to cameras, license-plate records, databases, commercial identifiers and devices that can reconstruct a person's movements without anybody leaving the office. The technology has improved tremendously. Whether the accountability kept up is a separate question.

American Proletariat does not propose asking investigators to ignore credible threats, or pretending the internet has made espionage a quaint historical hobby. We propose something more demanding: whenever the state searches, tracks, retains or analyzes information about people, the authority, necessity, safeguards and independent scrutiny must be identifiable. A government does not acquire a personal ownership interest in your life merely because you carry a telephone.

THE MANDATE

Audit federal intelligence and law-enforcement surveillance authorities, data purchases, classified expenditures, location tracking, facial recognition, biometric matching, license-plate systems, information-sharing agreements and retention practices. Strengthen judicial authorization where constitutional protections apply; clarify what kinds of collection require additional statutory warrants or orders; minimize information about people not reasonably relevant to an investigation; and create independent oversight with enforceable remedies.

The proposal distinguishes targeted investigations, foreign-intelligence collection, emergency response, routine public cameras and indiscriminate bulk monitoring. These activities involve different laws and risks. The goal is not to pronounce every sensor illegal. It is to ensure that public power stays proportionate, reviewable and compatible with constitutional rights.

Any new authorization must specify who can approve collection, what showing is required, how long information may be held, which personnel may search it, whether it can be shared or purchased, and who must be notified or can challenge misuse when law and safety permit.

THE FOURTH AMENDMENT DOES NOT EXPIRE WHEN THE BATTERY CHARGES

The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures and generally requires warrants supported by probable cause, with particular descriptions of the place to be searched and things to be seized. Its application depends on the kind of government activity, the privacy interest and recognized exceptions; it does not create an identical warrant rule for every government observation (Source 01).

In Carpenter v. United States, decided June 22, 2018, the Supreme Court held that government acquisition of extensive historical cell-site location records was a Fourth Amendment search. Investigators had obtained 12,898 location points covering 127 days of Timothy Carpenter's movements through an order that fell short of a probable-cause warrant. The Court rejected the notion that merely holding these records through a service provider destroyed all constitutional privacy interests (Source 02).

Carpenter was deliberately narrow. The Court did not decide every question about security cameras, other business records, real-time tracking, national-security intelligence or every emergency exception. AP's legal program must address those unresolved categories through actual legislative text, not cite one case as though it abolished every camera in America (Source 02).

WHAT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CAN SEE

A December 2024 Government Accountability Office review found that selected Department of Homeland Security law-enforcement components reported using more than twenty kinds of detection, observation and monitoring technology in fiscal 2023. These included tools such as automated license-plate readers, drones and other public-space observation systems. GAO found gaps in policies concerning collection of relevant information and bias assessments, and recommended additional safeguards (Source 03).

In a separate March 2024 congressional testimony, GAO reported that seven Justice and Homeland Security law-enforcement agencies had used facial-recognition technology for criminal investigations. All seven initially used such services without requiring related training; by April 2023, two had introduced training requirements. GAO also documented gaps in technology-specific civil-rights and civil-liberties guidance, though agencies subsequently took steps to address them (Source 04).

Those findings do not mean every photograph was collected illegally or every match resulted in wrongful arrest. They demonstrate why purchase records, accuracy studies, bias testing, audit logs, trained analysts and meaningful challenges to mistaken identification are essential. A machine-generated lead should not become an unquestioned accusation merely because it arrives wrapped in government software.

SECTION 702 · FOREIGN THREATS, DOMESTIC QUESTIONS

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act establishes a framework to target non-U.S. persons reasonably believed to be outside the United States for specified foreign-intelligence purposes, using court-reviewed certifications and targeting and minimization procedures. The statute is not a general authorization to target an American in the United States as though that person were a foreign intelligence target (Source 05).

In April 2026, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board published an updated assessment of Section 702. It described the program as valuable for national-security work and reported that reforms after 2023 had improved privacy and civil-liberties safeguards. The board's press release reported that FBI U.S.-person queries fell from 57,094 in 2023 to 7,413 in 2025, an approximately 87% reduction (Source 06).

That is meaningful progress. It is not an instruction to stop asking questions. The same review described additional rules for queries involving sensitive political, media and religious figures and continued to assess whether safeguards were sufficient. Counts of queries are not counts of people targeted, proven abuses, or convictions. Any reform must distinguish those quantities and disclose what public reporting can and cannot show (Source 06).

The precise statutory expiration, extension and reauthorization status of surveillance authorities must be checked against enacted law at the time legislation is introduced. This proposal does not presume that a past sunset date alone answers the legal status on the date a reader encounters the article.

DO NOT BUY WHAT YOU WOULD NEED A WARRANT TO TAKE

Government purchase of commercially held location, identity or behavioral data raises a distinct policy question. Information brokers may aggregate records gathered for advertising or other private uses, and federal agencies can seek access to some commercial databases under contracts or subscriptions. Whether a particular purchase constitutes a constitutional search depends on facts and law; the absence of a court ruling on every dataset is not a sensible substitute for democratic rules.

AP proposes statutory limits on buying personal information for investigative use as a means of bypassing protections that would apply if government obtained equivalent sensitive records directly. Establish public procurement inventories, approval standards, source documentation, necessary-use tests, retention limits, and deletion and audit requirements. Where security-sensitive contracts cannot be fully disclosed, authorized independent reviewers should still see them.

The same safeguards should apply to sharing sensitive information among federal agencies or with contractors. If a dataset is too revealing to collect without a justified purpose, passing it through three vendors should not turn it into harmless office stationery.

NO SECRET BLACKLIST FOR SPEECH

Investigations can involve serious crimes, espionage and threats. But political advocacy, lawful protest, journalism, religious practice and association are not themselves evidence of criminal or national-security wrongdoing. Standards for monitoring protected activities should require an articulated lawful predicate, narrow scope and documentation of why less intrusive methods were inadequate.

AP proposes additional independent approval for sensitive inquiries involving journalists, political movements, religious organizations and other constitutionally protected activities, with appropriate exceptions for imminent danger and genuine criminal conduct. The protections should not give prominent individuals immunity from legitimate investigation; they should prevent investigators from converting disfavored opinions into investigative predicates.

WHO WATCHES THE WATCHERS?

Strengthen inspectors general, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, judicial review and congressional oversight while preserving necessary secrecy for active investigations. Oversight needs professional staff, protected access to relevant records, auditability, authority to report findings, safe whistleblower channels and visible tracking of corrective actions.

A useful public annual report should distinguish requests, warrants, orders, collection events, searches of retained material, incident reports, confirmed violations, remedial actions and appeals. Reporting limitations must be explained. Aggregated counts should not be manipulated to imply that all searches were unlawful or that all formally compliant searches were wise.

A lawful remedy should exist for proven misuse, including administrative discipline, evidentiary consequences, judicial remedies and compensation where statutes authorize it. Employees who refuse unlawful requests should not have to choose between their constitutional oath and their salary.

THE LEGAL PATH

Congress would need to revise selected surveillance statutes, data-broker rules, procurement conditions, retention mandates, oversight authorities and available remedies. Courts would continue deciding constitutional disputes. Executive agencies would need auditable guidance, training and implementation, including protections for national-security information and independent auditing under lawful access arrangements.

The first phase would inventory collection and purchases across relevant agencies and contractors, compare current authority against actual practice, and publish a public taxonomy of surveillance methods. A second phase would create targeted safeguards and judicial-approval rules where needed. Later phases would integrate reporting and independent review before scaling technically complex systems.

Emergency exceptions must be narrow and reviewable. In a rescue or imminent-threat scenario, delay can cost lives; in an ordinary investigation, inconvenience is not a constitutional emergency. Review afterward should test whether the exception was used for the purpose it was written to serve.

THE TEN-YEAR LEDGER

A ten-year fiscal model must include the costs of inspector-general review, judicial processing, independent audits, secure logging, data deletion, staff training, civil-rights testing, procurement reform, public reports, technology replacement and remedies for documented violations. It must also evaluate operational effects of stronger authorization standards on serious investigations and emergency response.

Claims of savings from ending certain contracts must be net of termination fees, replacement systems, security obligations and transition work. An aggregate privacy benefit is not automatically cash returned to the Treasury. Conversely, improved oversight may prevent costly litigation, poor investigations or mistaken actions, but any fiscal offset needs evidence before entering the budget as a realized saving.

The national inventory and precise statutory designs are not yet complete. AP therefore cannot responsibly name a ten-year net cost or savings figure. We should publish multiple plausible scenarios once agency spending, workload, technology and compliance data have been established, with independently reviewable assumptions.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

Overbroad restrictions can impede investigations of terrorism, espionage, cyberattacks, kidnapping or organized crime, especially when time matters. A rigid warrant mandate in every circumstance could disregard recognized exceptions or foreign-intelligence distinctions. Mandatory disclosures can expose sources and methods or endanger cooperating witnesses.

The opposite danger is a collection apparatus so broad and opaque that citizens cannot meaningfully challenge errors. Poorly governed facial recognition can misidentify people. Bulk retention can enable uses never contemplated when records were obtained. Oversight offices can be politicized, ignored or deprived of funding. Independent review must be powerful enough to matter and constrained enough to respect legal procedure.

The test is neither 'surveillance is always tyranny' nor 'security requires total secrecy.' It is whether officials can demonstrate the legal basis, operational necessity, proportional safeguards, accountability and measurable benefit of each power.

MEASURING SUCCESS

Publish rates of warranted and otherwise authorized searches, compliance findings, inappropriate queries, serious privacy incidents, correction times, audit coverage, contractor-data purchases, sensitive-query approvals and judicial outcomes. Report false matches or investigative harms associated with algorithmic tools while protecting confidential sources and individual privacy.

Measure the ability to investigate substantiated threats alongside protection against unjustified monitoring. If safeguards reduce unlawful collection but prevent no legitimate investigation, that is useful evidence. If they create serious operational failures, revise their implementation and publish the reasons rather than hiding the tradeoff.

The government is allowed to protect the people. It is not entitled to know everything about them.

SOURCES & FURTHER READING

01 · National Archives — The Constitution of the United States: Fourth Amendment. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript

02 · U.S. Supreme Court — Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296 (2018). https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/16-402

03 · U.S. Government Accountability Office — Law Enforcement: DHS Could Better Address Bias Risk and Enhance Privacy Protections for Technologies Used in Public, GAO-25-107302 (December 3, 2024). https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107302

04 · U.S. Government Accountability Office — Facial Recognition Technology: Federal Law Enforcement Agency Efforts Related to Civil Rights and Training, GAO-24-107372 (March 2024). https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-107372

05 · U.S. House Office of the Law Revision Counsel — 50 U.S.C. § 1881a, Procedures for Targeting Certain Persons Outside the United States. https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title50-section1881a&num=0&edition=prelim

06 · Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board — FISA Section 702 Oversight Project and 2026 Report (April 2, 2026). https://www.pclob.gov/OversightProjects/Details/20

07 · U.S. Government Accountability Office — Information Technology: Government-Wide Guidance on Handling Data Could Improve Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Protections, GAO-25-106057 (November 19, 2024). https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-106057

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