Himes Fact-Checked on 'Misleading' Claims About Warrantless Spying

[Celerity]

Jim Himes keeps telling his constituents that U.S. intelligence agencies don’t spy on them, and “have no reason” to buy Americans’ data. Advocates say that’s untrue.

https://prospect.org/2026/04/06/jim-himes-warrantless-spying-fisa-house-committee-intelligence-ai-surveillance/


Rep. Jim Himes at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. on December 9, 2025. Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

After being ambushed by privacy activists outside a town hall in southern Connecticut last week, Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, spoke at length about the urgency of extending Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the warrantless spying program he has been actively lobbying Democratic colleagues to support without reforms. The 702 program is set to expire on April 20. Himes assured protestors that “anything I said today, you can sort of check if you want.”

In a press release Friday, organizers with QuitGPT and a number of Connecticut-based advocacy groups held him to it: “Unfortunately, Himes repeated several false and misleading statements about FISA, the data broker loophole, and AI surveillance.” Their comments came just hours after a separate virtual town hall last Friday where Himes “repeated many of the same statements” about Section 702. In both instances, Himes suggested that U.S. intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency (NSA) do not purchase Americans’ commercial data through the program. “There’s no data acquired under FISA 702 authorities that is commercial data,” he told protestors last week. “We don’t buy it through that authority.”

The NSA does indeed buy Americans’ commercial data from private companies, and it doesn’t need a warrant to do so. The agency only disclosed the nature of its commercial data purchases after Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who has been trying to close this loophole for years, applied political pressure. In November 2023, Wyden placed President Joe Biden’s pick to run the NSA on hold, making the nominee’s Senate confirmation contingent on the agency coming clean about its practices.

The NSA resisted full transparency at first, but after stewing for about three months, it conceded. “There is a lot of baloney out there when it comes to government surveillance,” a spokesperson for Wyden told the Prospect in an email. “Here are the facts: multiple intelligence and law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, Defense Intelligence Agency, NSA, ICE, CBP, DEA, IRS, and Secret Service have all purchased or are still purchasing Americans’ data without a warrant or any court oversight whatsoever.” The spokesperson continued: “People who claim this isn’t happening are misinformed.”

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