Rhetoric Versus Reality: The Growth of the Surveillance State Across the Trump Administrations

Published: 09/22/2026

During political campaigns, candidates often criticize government overreach. However, an administration’s actual policies can differ significantly from its public statements. This pattern has been clearly visible in the management of federal surveillance across both Donald Trump’s first term (2017–2021) and his current second term. On the campaign trail and in public statements, Trump has repeatedly attacked federal intelligence agencies, claiming that a “deep state” abuses its power and pointing to instances where his own political campaign was targeted by government wiretaps.

At the same time, his platform has consistently favored a hardline approach to national security. He has frequently stated that he would “err on the side of security” and has strongly supported expanded law enforcement authorities. His public complaints have focused primarily on how specific intelligence agencies treat him personally, rather than a desire to reduce the overall size of the surveillance state. In practice, across both terms, his administration has maintained, expanded, and centralized federal data collection, using modern technologies, federal databases, and private contractors to increase government oversight.

Intelligence Laws: Words Versus Policy

Despite public arguments with intelligence agencies, the Trump administration has consistently supported keeping major surveillance authorities intact:

• FISA Section 702 Reauthorizations: In 2018, Trump signed the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a key law that allows federal agencies to collect massive amounts of foreign digital communications without obtaining individual warrants for each target. In his second term, the administration has pushed to maintain Section 702 capabilities without adding mandatory warrant requirements for federal searches targeting U.S. citizens.
• Executive Order 12333: Executive agencies under both terms have relied heavily on Executive Order 12333, which governs foreign intelligence gathered outside U.S. borders. Because global internet traffic routinely routes through international undersea cables, large volumes of domestic American communications are harvested under EO 12333. Operating entirely within the executive branch, this program functions without statutory limits from Congress or oversight from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
• Opposition to Consumer Encryption: The administration has consistently opposed strong privacy features in commercial consumer technology, publicly pressuring technology companies to build special access tools for law enforcement to bypass smartphone encryption during investigations.

Direct Seizure and Warrantless Harvesting of Personal Data

Across both terms, the federal government has expanded methods to directly collect and harvest citizens’ and residents’ personal information without obtaining a search warrant or notifying the individuals involved:

• Mass Inter-Agency Data Sharing and the Privacy Act: In March 2025, an executive order directed federal agencies to eliminate “information silos” by granting designated officials full access to unclassified government records, IT systems, and software platforms across departments. The order also required state programs receiving federal funds to grant the federal government access to their data. By facilitating the sharing of tax, benefits, labor, and immigration records without citizen consent, this policy bypasses traditional restrictions under the Privacy Act of 1974, which was designed to prevent the executive branch from centralizing citizens’ personal records into a single master database.
• Social Media Farming and AI Screening: Through State Department and immigration initiatives, such as the “Catch and Revoke” program, federal agencies harvest public and private social media posts from visa applicants, visitors, and citizens. Using artificial intelligence and natural language software, these programs scrape user handles, posts, and online connections to monitor political speech, flag ideological associations, and build digital profiles without the user’s knowledge.
• Street-Level Biometric Scans: During immigration and law enforcement operations, federal agents deploy mobile facial-recognition apps (such as “Mobile Fortify”) on smartphones. Agents take real-time photos of individuals during street encounters or traffic stops without asking for consent or showing a warrant. These photos are instantly checked against government image databases and retained in federal systems for up to 15 years.
• Warrantless Cell Phone Interception (“Stingrays”): Federal agencies (including ICE, the FBI, and the Secret Service) deploy Cell-Site Simulators, commonly known as “Stingrays.” These devices function as fake cell phone towers, forcing all nearby mobile phones within a given radius to connect to them. This allows agents to harvest real-time location data, phone identifiers, and call logs from every bystander in the area without an individualized warrant.
• Compulsory Biometric Phone Unlocking: Law enforcement agencies exploit legal gaps regarding digital encryption. While courts generally treat typed passcodes as protected under the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, federal agents at borders and during arrests routinely force individuals to physically unlock their smartphones using facial recognition or fingerprints without a court order.
• Border Device Searches: Customs and Border Protection (CBP) routinely conducts warrantless searches of smartphones, laptops, and hard drives at international borders and within one hundred miles of the U.S. border under the “Border Search Exception.” Information pulled from these personal devices is regularly downloaded and stored in centralized government repositories.
• Aerial Surveillance Over Domestic Protests: During domestic demonstrations, federal agencies deploy military-grade aerial surveillance. CBP flies Predator drones, while the National Guard and FBI deploy aircraft equipped with high-power cameras to monitor crowds and track individuals from the air without individualized suspicion.

Indirect Data Collection Through Public-Private Partnerships

When constitutional rules or state laws prevent federal agencies from directly seizing data, the government frequently uses commercial firms, contractors, and data brokers as intermediaries:

• The Carpenter Ruling and the Data Broker Loophole: In the 2018 landmark case Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that law enforcement must obtain a search warrant to get historical cell phone location records from phone carriers. To bypass this ruling, federal agencies purchase commercially available location data directly from private data brokers. By buying bulk location histories harvested by mobile apps, agencies acquire detailed “pattern of life” dossiers on Americans without demonstrating probable cause to a judge.
• Commercial Facial Recognition Networks: When state laws or court rulings restrict federal access to state DMV photo databases, law enforcement agencies subscribe to commercial surveillance engines like Clearview AI. These private companies scrape billions of public social media photos and web images to build facial-recognition databases that law enforcement can search without judicial authorization.
• Private Tech Infrastructure Vendors: State motor vehicle departments and federal agencies outsource their biometric database management to private technology firms (such as IDEMIA and NEC). Federal agencies also partner with data-mining contractors like Palantir and Babel Street to aggregate and analyze complex sets of personal information. When these private systems are challenged in court, vendors frequently assert trade-secret protections over their software, limiting judicial review.
• Automated License Plate Readers: Law enforcement routinely taps into private camera networks, such as Flock Safety’s automated license plate readers, creating searchable logs of daily vehicle movement across public roads. Local police departments frequently provide federal agencies with access to search these private camera networks without a warrant.
• Pandemic and Commercial Movement Aggregation: Federal health and security agencies have partnered with commercial location aggregators to analyze movement patterns, venue density, and gathering habits using data harvested from mobile applications.

Documented Abuses and Impacts on Civil Liberties

Government inspection reports, FOIA disclosures, and court documents show that these centralized surveillance tools are repeatedly searched improperly or misused by government personnel:

• Improper FISA Searches: Declassified rulings from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court revealed hundreds of thousands of improper Section 702 database searches by FBI agents targeting U.S. citizens, including political protesters, campaign donors, and elected officials.
• Targeting Domestic Groups via Executive Orders: Directives issued under executive authority have authorized specialized federal task forces and intelligence operations to track domestic political movements and protest groups, combining social media tracking, aerial surveillance, and database queries.
• First Amendment “Chilling Effects”: Federal agencies have compiled intelligence files on journalists covering events and tracked immigration lawyers and legal observers. When citizens know their political speech, social media posts, or assembly at protests are logged into federal databases without their knowledge, it creates a “chilling effect” that discourages free expression and public assembly.
• Errors in Wiretap Applications: Department of Justice Inspector General investigations into wiretap applications submitted to the FISA court found serious procedural errors, missing facts, and unsupported statements in filings used to monitor political campaign advisers.
• Personal Misuse: Internal Inspector General reports from intelligence agencies document instances where individual employees misused government databases for personal reasons, such as tracking romantic partners or ex-spouses.

How Mass Surveillance Expands Executive Power

The expansion of digital surveillance changes the balance of power within the federal government in three main ways:

1. It Reduces Judicial Oversight: When executive agencies buy commercial tracking data, use private biometric clearinghouses, or query automatic camera networks, they bypass the courts. Judges no longer review whether there is probable cause before the government collects detailed records on a citizen’s daily life.
2. It Weakens Congressional Oversight: Mass surveillance programs rely heavily on classified rules and technical complexity. Because Congress often does not receive full reports on agency mistakes until years later, lawmakers struggle to pass timely reforms. In response to these workarounds, bipartisan members of Congress have repeatedly introduced legislation like the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act to attempt to close the data broker loophole and restore legislative limits on executive data purchases.
3. It Reverses Government Transparency: In a constitutional republic, government actions are supposed to be open to public view, while citizens maintain private lives. Mass surveillance reverses this relationship by keeping executive operations secret through classification while making the daily lives of citizens visible to the state.

While candidate rhetoric across both of Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns frequently criticized intelligence agencies as overly powerful, administrative practice tells a different story. By maintaining and reauthorizing major surveillance authorities, expanding database sharing across departments, purchasing commercial data to bypass the Carpenter ruling, and consolidating biometric tracking tools, the administration has steadily expanded federal tracking capabilities. The result is not a reduction in state oversight, but a larger, more centralized surveillance apparatus with fewer checks from the courts, state governments, or Congress.