Tech
With US spy laws set to expire, lawmakers are split over protecting Americans from warrantless surveillance
A long-running law that has allowed U.S. intelligence agencies to collect and analyze huge amounts of overseas communications without needing search warrants is set to expire next week, and lawmakers are in a deadlock over whether to allow the Trump administration to extend it without any changes.
Known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the law allows the National Security Agency, the CIA, the FBI and other federal intelligence agencies to record overseas communications that flow through the United States without needing individualized search warrants.
In sweeping up much of the world’s communications, the agencies also collect unfathomable amounts of information, including phone logs and emails, on Americans who interact with people subject to surveillance overseas. This data is collected despite constitutional protections that should shield Americans and people in the United States from government surveillance.
But ahead of the law’s expiry on April 20, a bipartisan, pro-privacy group of House lawmakers and Senators are calling for sweeping changes to FISA, arguing that the changes are “essential” for protecting the privacy rights of Americans.
Some lawmakers are calling for widespread reforms following years of scandals and surveillance abuses across successive U.S. administrations, while others are holding their vote to further their own political goals by attaching the provisions to other legislation.
A social media post from President Trump suggests that, as of this week, the White House is keen on the idea of passing a simple re-authorization without any changes to the law.
In the middle of the night into Friday, House Republicans approved to extend FISA until April 30 as a stopgap to make more time to negotiate. The Senate, set to reconvene on Monday, would still need to approve the bill by majority vote for it to pass the short-term extension.
The bipartisan group’s legislative fix is the Government Surveillance Reform Act, introduced into Congress in March by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR), Mike Lee (R-UT) and others, which aims to curtail some of the government’s warrantless surveillance programs. Among other things, the lawmakers seek provisions to prevent government agencies from using a “backdoor search” loophole that allows them to trawl the communications of Americans without first obtaining a search warrant.
Another key provision would prevent federal agencies from buying commercially available data about Americans from data brokers — a practice the U.S. government has long asserted that it does not need a court’s permission for.
App developers collect reams of location data from people who use smartphone apps, and then sell that information to brokers, who in turn sell that data to governments and militaries. FBI director Kash Patel confirmed in a congressional hearing in March that the FBI buys Americans’ location data without seeking court authorization.
Both Republicans and Democrats are reportedly keen on closing this loophole, which allows spy agencies to buy commercial data and use AI models to analyze billions of location points. This is currently also a sticking point in the U.S. government’s negotiations with Anthropic and OpenAI over the unrestricted use of their tools.
The American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the Project on Government Oversight are among some of the privacy groups supporting the bipartisan bill.
It’s currently unclear if the bill will pass, but lawmakers say legislative reforms are necessary, especially as technological advancements make it easier for tech companies and governments to surveil people than ever before.
Wyden, the longest-serving lawmaker to sit on any congressional intelligence committee and a known privacy hawk, has warned that many lawmakers are not fully aware that multiple U.S. administrations have long relied on a secret, legal interpretation of Section 702 that “directly affects the privacy rights of Americans.” Wyden said the matter remains secret, but urged the government to declassify the information so lawmakers can discuss it.
In a post on X on Thursday, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY, 4th) said he would vote against the reauthorization of Section 702, after he echoed Wyden by raising concerns about how the FBI was interpreting the law.
Even if Section 702 expires on Monday, it doesn’t mark the immediate end of the U.S. government’s surveillance powers.
While lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives are yet to reach consensus on renewing or altering Section 702, a legal quirk would allow U.S. surveillance to continue until March 2027 unless Congress actively intervenes — even if the law expires.
This is because the secretive Washington, D.C. court that oversees the government’s compliance with FISA, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), asks the government each year to certify that its practices are lawful. That rubber-stamp allows the government to collect phone calls and emails for a duration of 12 months, effectively guaranteeing that the surveillance programs that rely on FISA’s legal powers will continue for at least a year.
The U.S. government also has other surveillance powers that aren’t overseen by Congress, such as Executive Order 12333, an entirely secret presidential directive that dictates most of the U.S. government’s surveillance outside of the United States. It also ensnares an unknown quantity of Americans’ private communications.
Tech
Why Andrew Yang is building instead of waiting for Washington
Andrew Yang’s 2020 presidential campaign was based on a warning that automation and AI would hollow out the labor market and concentrate wealth in the hands of a few. At the time, ideas like Universal Basic Income felt fringe. Now Dario Amodei, Sam Altman, and Bernie Sanders are all saying versions of the same thing.
An entrepreneur at heart, Yang has found a new way to put money back into the hands of the people — one phone bill at a time. On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan talks to Yang about his startup Noble Mobile, which pays you to use your phone less, ways to combat the “attention economy,” and what startups can do when the government won’t move.
Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
Tech
xAI fired an engineer who raised alarms about Grok safety, new lawsuit claims
A former engineer at Elon Musk’s xAI has filed suit against the company and its parent SpaceX claiming he was fired for raising concerns about AI safety.
Devin Kim, who left xAI in September 2025, filed the suit in a California state court on Tuesday. The complaint comes days before SpaceX is set to join the public markets in what’s shaping up to be the largest IPO in history.
According to the lawsuit, which TechCrunch has viewed, Kim became a prominent voice for AI safety while working on Grok, xAI’s AI chatbot. He allegedly complained repeatedly about xAI’s failure to prioritize safety in Grok’s development, a product that has since come under fire for a range of safety and behavioral issues. In particular, Kim was concerned with the possibility that Grok could foment discrimination and help spread information about weapons of mass destruction.
“Grok, of course, proved Mr. Kim right by engaging in spectacular displays of online hatred and vitriol, with the model likening itself to Hitler (‘MechaHitler’),” the lawsuit reads. “Following the Hitler debacle, Mr. Kim worked to re-evaluate Grok’s political bias and discriminatory tendencies.”
A few months after Kim departed xAI, Grok made headlines again when the chatbot was used to flood X — Musk’s social media platform that also falls under the xAI umbrella — with nonconsensual sexual imagery.
The lawsuit also positions Kim as a whistleblower who was concerned about xAI’s alleged disregard for AI safety as “unlawful” in areas such as internet regulation, consumer protection and unfair business practices, and arms and explosives regulation, among others.
xAI and SpaceX did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Kim’s focus on AI safety predates his time at xAI. While working at Scale AI, Kim worked on early safety AI initiatives, like leading a project that produced training data for AI to train systems to detect harmful content and comply with governance policies. Last week, the nonprofit Center for AI Safety, which focuses on AI risks, named Kim as its president.
Interestingly, the lawsuit doesn’t implicate Musk himself as a reason for a lack of safety. Rather, Kim’s lawyers describe Musk as having directed xAI to follow the law and implement appropriate safety and testing processes. Instead the claim targets Kim’s supervisor, xAI co-founder Jimmy Ba — who left the company earlier this year — saying that Ba ignored Musk’s directives and retaliated against Kim for pushing for safeguards, in an effort to “silence his repeated complaints about AI safety and biases.”
The lawsuit portrays Ba as someone who vehemently opposed AI safety measures, allegedly telling Kim at one point “AI will kill us all anyway,” and who was instead driven by a mission to make xAI the first to reach superintelligence.
“In one instance in or around August 2025, Mr. Ba attempted to thwart EU safety regulations during the release of Grok Code 1, misrepresenting aspects of the model in order to avoid legally required testing,” the complaint says. “Mr. Ba indicated that he would rather release an unsafe model than a poor-performing one. Mr. Musk ultimately had to intervene.”
According to the lawsuit, Kim intended to give a presentation of his findings the week of September 15, 2025, but Ba called him into a meeting and told him they should “go [their] separate ways” without providing a satisfactory reason.
TechCrunch has reached out to Ba for comment.
Kim is seeking compensatory and punitive damages, as well as a declaratory judgment that xAI and SpaceX’s conduct was unlawful.
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Tech
Anthropic’s Dario Amodei has just one direct report
If founders and other business leaders weren’t already envious of Dario Amodei, who sits atop one of the world’s fastest-growing AI companies — currently valued by private market investors at roughly the trillion-dollar mark little more than five years after it was founded — they’re going to be seriously envious now.
In a new sit-down with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang, he reveals he has just one direct report; that’s his chief of staff. Everyone else on Anthropic’s executive team reports to his sister, co-founder and President Daniela Amodei, who handles day-to-day operations.
Anyone who has managed a large team knows that the people side of the job has a way of consuming everything else. Amodei’s arrangement frees him to focus almost entirely on strategy, culture, research direction, and sweeping essays on the future of civilization (with footnotes). “It’s incredibly freeing,” he tells Chang.
It’s a highly unusual structure. OpenAI’s Sam Altman reportedly has around half a dozen direct reports, which is far more standard, while Nvidia’s Jensen Huang — another extreme outlier — has many dozens.
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