Congress is about to hand the NSA another blank check to spy on Americans.
Boebert wants one answer first.
She wants to know if the agents who used secret spy powers to run background checks on women they met on dating apps still have their jobs.
NSA Agents Used FISA 702 to Run Warrantless Searches on Personal Contacts
Section 702 of FISA is the most powerful surveillance tool the U.S. government possesses.
Congress built it to target foreign terrorists and enemy governments.
A 2023 federal oversight report revealed something else entirely.
An NSA analyst ran Section 702 database searches – twice – on people he or she had met through an online dating service.
Two other NSA analysts separately used the same authority to run surveillance searches on a prospective tenant for a rental property.
These were ordinary Americans whose private communications got pulled because a government employee was nosy, suspicious, or worse.
Representative Lauren Boebert sent a letter to NSA Director Joshua Rudd demanding to know what happened next – and her six demands arrive at the worst possible moment for the intelligence community.
Section 702 expires April 20.
Former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director Chris Wray, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper signed a letter last week urging Congress to renew Section 702 with zero reforms, zero warrant requirements, and zero accountability for what their analysts were doing with it.
These are the same officials who ran the program while analysts were using it to stalk their dates.
FBI Director Kash Patel went to Capitol Hill personally to lobby conservative Republicans into backing the clean extension.
He failed.
Boebert put it plainly: "Spying on Americans isn't America First. I'm a NO on FISA."
Boebert Demands Answers Before Congress Votes to Renew Warrantless Spying
Boebert's letter gives NSA Director Rudd ten days to answer six specific questions.
She wants the disciplinary records for every analyst involved in the dating app and tenant searches – including whether they still have their jobs and security clearances.
She wants a year-by-year count of every NSA analyst disciplined for illegal U.S. person queries from 2020 through 2025.
Criminal charges were always an option – and nobody pursued them.
50 U.S.C. § 1809 makes it a crime to conduct electronic surveillance outside legal authorization.
These analysts ran warrantless surveillance on Americans for personal reasons using foreign intelligence tools.
If that doesn't trigger a criminal referral, what does?
Nobody ever made them answer – until now.
The FISA Court Found the FBI Is Still Conducting Illegal Backdoor Searches
The FISA Court flagged a new problem just last month.
In a March 2026 ruling, the court found that the FBI's filtering tools – the safeguards supposed to protect Americans' data – are being used across the entire intelligence community to conduct warrantless U.S. person queries.
The court ordered agencies to fix their systems by April 16.
Congress handed the American people reform after the last FISA abuse scandal.
They passed the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act in 2024.
The FISA Court just confirmed the FBI is already running the same illegal searches under a different tool name.
Brennan and Clapper know this.
They signed the letter anyway.
Think about what they're actually asking: give us 18 more months of unchecked access to your phone records, your texts, your emails – and don't ask what happened to the last guys who got caught using it to run background checks on their Tinder matches.
Boebert's asking the one question they can't answer.
Were those analysts fired – or are they sitting at a terminal right now with full access to your private communications?
Sources:
- Sean Moran, "Exclusive — Rep. Lauren Boebert Demands Answers for 'Deeply Troubling Abuse of Power' by NSA Analysts," Breitbart News, April 13, 2026.
- "Report: House GOP Leadership Punts Clean FISA Spy Powers Vote," Breitbart News, March 20, 2026.
- "Former National Security Officials Urge Congress to Renew Section 702 Before Expiration," Nextgov/FCW, April 2026.
- "Judge Renews Procedures for 702 Surveillance Program That Could Soon Lapse," Nextgov/FCW, April 2026.
