Domestic Surveillance Is Expanding With New, AI-Powered Tools

WSJ Tech News Briefing

The Wall Street Journal

Tech News, News

4.3 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 1 May 2026

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Department of Homeland Security is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on tools that give federal agents easy access to personal data and whereabouts of millions of people. WSJ investigative reporter Hannah Critchfield explains the latest on the technology, and how it’s being deployed. Plus, WSJ Supreme Court reporter James Romoser joins to break down the battle over whether geofence warrants are an unconstitutional invasion of privacy. Sign up for the WSJ's free Technology newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:28.3	among real estate professionals. Welcome to tech news briefing. It's Friday, May 1st. I'm Imani-Mauiz for the Wall Street Journal.
0:40.0	On today's show, we're taking a look at two stories on the state of surveillance in 2026.
0:46.1	Up first, this week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that's the latest test of how the Fourth Amendment,
0:52.1	the protection against unreasonable searches and seizures,
0:58.6	applies in the digital age. But how they'll rule is anybody's guess.
1:04.2	Listening to Monday's oral argument, it honestly became even tougher to make a prediction.
1:09.1	Then, the Department of Homeland Security is deploying new high-tech tools to combat illegal immigration. Those tools are also giving federal agents access to the personal data and whereabouts of U.S. citizens.
1:16.1	We're in this moment with the Department of Homeland Security where people who used to work there,
1:21.9	people who have been impacted by the surveillance civil rights experts are sort of saying that it's
1:26.6	testing the limits of
1:29.3	what the department can and cannot do with that surveillance.
1:36.3	But first, more than 500 million Google users have the platform's location history function enabled, self-included.
1:48.1	Now, the data of one man is at the center of a key privacy case that was in front of the Supreme Court this week.
1:54.0	The case was brought by O'Kello Chautry, who was serving a 12-year prison sentence for robbing a credit union near Richmond, Virginia back in 2019.
2:02.8	Authorities used a so-called geofence warrant to identify Chotry.
	...

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