While Congress Ponders Cutting Spy Powers, the FBI Amps Up Domestic Surveillance
A vote on FISA is getting headlines, but the FBI may have ways to keep using the tool.
The FBI under Donald Trump has deleted a huge chunk of its own rulebook, a major revision unlike anything the bureau has done in at least 10 years, FBI sources tell Racket. The administration’s rewrite of the rules shaping the bureau’s domestic investigatory and intelligence work represent an effort for the new leadership to transform the bureau’s day-to-day operation.
Details on the edits to the FBI’s internal rules arrive just as news is spreading of a secret court opinion from March 17th allowing agents and other intelligence officials to continue using select spy powers into 2027, even if the authorizing law expires this month.
The business of how the FBI conducts investigations is changing behind closed doors. The rules are being rewritten in secret, with judges issuing classified opinions that Americans can’t read.
The bureau isn’t revealing its new rulebook. It’s not even identifying what it cut from the old one. The March opinion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) reportedly allows the bureau to continue its spying regardless of whether Congress extends the authority.
While the FBI’s new rules remain shrouded in secrecy — Racket is trying to get hold of the new manual — the effects are clear. The FBI is getting more aggressive.
The FBI’s rulebook is called the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, or DIOG for short. Reforming it became a top priority for Director Kash Patel following conversations with the workforce about how to streamline the FBI’s operation, according to Bureau sources.
The DIOG is the primary policy manual governing everything from the use of confidential informants to its counterintelligence operations. Racket has written about changes to the manual before, for instance in this article from 2022 detailing how the Bureau added a new “baseline collection plan” in 2008 that allowed the FBI to emphasize data collection over case-building and restore Hoover-era concepts like coming up with “strategies to disrupt” investigatory targets.
Patel said in March on X the bureau had reduced the volume of the DIOG by 40% to allow agents to move quicker. The Bureau in a statement to Racket said it overhauled the handbook with “feedback from employees, attorneys, and committees to ensure this policy guide is efficient and useful to all of our employees across the country.”
“The document was difficult to navigate, cumbersome, and redundant in many areas,” the FBI said. “The updated version of the DIOG will more effectively guide our workforce as we crush violent crime and defend the homeland.”
Precisely what the FBI altered isn’t clear. The Bureau didn’t show Racket its new rules. It did claim that, “Before this year, the DIOG had not been updated in over 10 years.”
That likely can’t be right. The Bureau previously published on its website both a 2021 revision and a 2024 update of the DIOG. The 2021 revision included changes to rules regarding when the FBI must alert law enforcement of suspected child abuse, according to a Justice Department Inspector General’s report.
The FBI dismissed these previous changes as small in comparison to the “much larger update” the FBI undertook with Patel at the helm. The new Director said in March on X that the Trump administration rebuilt the FBI from the ground up, pushing more than 1,000 agents out of Washington, D.C. and into the field. He added the Bureau’s effort to eliminate politics and distractions yielded an uptick in violent crime arrests and in the apprehensions of child predators.
Just as the Bureau took the gloves off agents, the Justice Department took the leash off its personnel. In April 2025, former Attorney General Pam Bondi rescinded policies preventing it from forcing news media to testify and provide records, in order to punish people the government deemed to be leakers of sensitive info.
The decision had immediate results, sending shockwaves through the fourth estate.
The FBI raided Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s Virginia home in January 2026 and seized her computers, recorder, phone, and hard drive while reportedly in pursuit of an alleged leaker of classified information regarding U.S. government actions in Venezuela.
Last week, the FBI revealed it read a reporter’s private messages with a former U.S. Army employee who accused the government of wrongdoing.
Rather than investigate her allegations, the government charged the former Army employee, Courtney Williams, under the Espionage Act. Williams had attempted to blow the whistle about conduct by the military to investigative writer Seth Harp, who wasn’t identified in the FBI’s affidavit but advocated for her release.
Ironically, numerous Trump officials as well as Hill legislators from both parties complained during the Biden years after being placed under surveillance as part of leak investigations. That included one tied to the Trump-Russia probe that saw both current scandal fixation Eric Swalwell and future Senator Adam Schiff receive notices from Apple that their records were turned over to the Justice Department. A former aide to Chuck Grassley also received a notice from Google. Patel himself as well as Dan Scavino, Jeff Clark, and Michael Caputo also complained about receiving notices before this term. A subtext of such collections is that the FBI gets a glimpse into who’s speaking to what reporters.
Journalists aren’t inherently innocent — a former Washington Post journalist pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography just last week — but surveillance targeting reporters and their sources are another matter, and have sparked concern on Capitol Hill.
FISA IN THE CROSSHAIRS
The FBI’s searches through foreign intelligence databases for media, political, and religious organizations and individuals rose last year, according to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. The number of sensitive queries rose to 839 in 2025 from 227 in 2024.
The Board is a federal agency tasked with balancing Americans’ rights with the government’s desires. It issued a report earlier this month promoting the importance of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which enables the federal government to target and collect foreigners’ communications.
Sen. Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat, complained the Board’s report represented a “blaring alarm warning of abuses” involving reading the communications of journalists and political organizations. Wyden’s staff told Racket the “FBI has refused to explain why sensitive, warrantless searches have more than tripled.”
The FBI’s increased activity also stands in contrast to its fellow intelligence agencies. While the FBI’s queries of U.S. person terms in foreign intelligence databases rose in 2025 over 2024, the CIA, NSA, and National Counterterrorism Center’s combined U.S. person searches declined over the same timeframe, at least according to an intelligence community report published this month.
Previous administrations and their FBI subordinates also snooped on reporters and other Americans accused of no crimes. FBI agents working for the first Trump administration and Biden administration collected intel on more than 1,000 members of the press, public officials, political candidates, and religious organizations, according to a confidential government report published by Racket in February.
Americans’ privacy concerns are a critical part of the debate raging in Washington this week over whether Congress ought to reauthorize the Section 702 surveillance powers without changes before they expire next week.
The House reviewed a clean extension in the Rules Committee and lawmakers are preparing to vote on the measure this week ahead of its April 20 deadline.
The drama over the spying powers was quietly subverted by the nation’s intelligence court last month, however.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court issued that classified ruling in March re-approving the program to continue hoovering up phone calls and emails through March 2027, regardless of whether Congress acts, according to the New York Times.
The secret opinion ensures that America’s spies will continue to use the hotly debated authority even as the authoring judge reportedly expressed concerns about the precise tools used by the FBI, CIA, and NSA.
This judicial workaround to congressional action is predictable.
A ruling governing the spying powers enables the government to continue collecting intelligence under an authorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court even if the relevant provision expires, according to the Congressional Research Service. The Biden administration previously sought to take advantage of the same work-around.
Recapping: even though FISA authority is set to expire, the executive branch may believe a judicial ruling takes precedence and continue searching, absent new Congressional guidance.
Before Congress considers extending the authority, civil liberties watchdogs on Capitol Hill are demanding answers. Wyden’s office told Racket it wants an explanation for why certain of the bureau’s warrantless searches more than tripled before lawmakers vote on FISA’s renewal.
The senator also called for the declassification of the court opinion and issued a warning that the government has relied on a secret legal interpretation of the spying authorities that “directly affects the privacy rights of Americans.”
He told colleagues he dropped off a classified letter with House security officials on Monday about the secret proceedings and urged his colleagues to review it before voting to extend the spy powers.
The House was expected to consider extending FISA on Wednesday, but Majority leader Mike Johnson postponed the vote after conservatives threatened to tank the bill. More to come.
https://www.racket.news/p/while-congress-ponders-cutting-spy