View All Press Releases

Attorney General Raúl Torrez Leads Multistate Call for Congress to Close Loophole Enabling Federal Mass Surveillance

• March 24, 2026

Albuquerque, NM – New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez today announced that he is leading a coalition of seventeen state attorneys general urging Congress to take immediate action to halt federal agencies’ use of commercially purchased data and artificial intelligence tools that enable mass surveillance of Americans without judicial, legislative, or public oversight. The letter calls on Congress to close the data‑broker loophole, require warrants for federal access to Americans’ digital data, prevent domestic surveillance via foreign intelligence laws, mandate deletion of unlawfully collected information and related AI models, and establish nationwide transparency and accountability standards for data brokers.

“Americans should not have to sacrifice their privacy and constitutional rights just to exist in the modern world,” said Attorney General Raúl Torrez. “Federal agencies are sidestepping longstanding legal protections by buying vast amounts of personal data and using artificial intelligence to analyze it—without a warrant, without oversight, and without accountability. That is not how our system is supposed to work. We are calling on Congress to close this loophole, put clear guardrails in place, and ensure that advancing technology does not come at the expense of our fundamental freedoms.”

In the letter sent to the leadership of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, Attorney General Torrez and the coalition of attorneys general warn that federal agencies are exploiting a “data broker loophole” to obtain detailed information about Americans’ movements, associations, political activity, and daily lives—information the government would otherwise be required to obtain through a warrant or pursuant to other legal procedures.

The attorneys general cite recent examples—including federal agencies’ purchase of billions of airline ticketing records and mobile location data from commercial brokers—that reveal a pattern of warrantless surveillance of the population in general through the acquisition of massive datasets. Several of these practices have already drawn bipartisan concern in Congress and the public after media reporting uncovered the federal government’s ability to track individuals’ travel, movements, and daily routines through these datasets.

The letter highlights that current statutory protections, including the Privacy Act of 1974 and the E‑Government Act, are outdated and fail to address modern realities in which AI tools can rapidly re‑identify “pseudonymized” datasets and assemble intimate profiles of individuals without their knowledge or consent. Federal agencies have repeatedly failed to comply with existing privacy requirements, according to recent Inspector General reports.

The coalition calls on Congress to enact comprehensive reforms, including measures that would:

• Prohibit federal agencies from purchasing data that would otherwise require a warrant to obtain.
• Require judicial warrants before accessing Americans’ web browsing activity, search queries, and location information.
• Ensure intelligence agencies cannot circumvent limits on domestic surveillance by exploiting foreign intelligence authorities or third‑party vendors.
• Mandate deletion of unlawfully collected data and any algorithms trained using such data. “Congress must act before federal agencies develop and rely on massive surveillance databases that track Americans’ daily lives in ways that are effectively impossible to unwind.” said Attorney General Torrez.

Joining Attorney General Torrez in sending this letter are the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawai’i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.

Copy of Letter

Most Viewed