Lawfare Daily: Inside the Law Letting Senators Sue Over Phone Data
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 25 November 2025
⏱️ 48 minutes
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Summary
Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes talks with Executive Editor Natalie Orpett and Senior Editor Michael Feinberg about their recent Lawfare article examining a little-noticed piece of legislation that was slipped into the deal to end the government shutdown—one that gives senators a civil right of action to sue the U.S. government when their phone or metadata is accessed without notice, with a payout of $500,000 per “instance.”
They discuss the potential consequences of the law for surveillance, separation of powers, and the relationship between Congress and law enforcement. It’s not just about senators getting paid, though the potential price tag is staggering. It’s about whether a broad, retroactive, and loosely defined cause of action undermines critical investigative tools and erodes the integrity of national security and criminal investigations.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Nearly every news alert in 2025 has raised questions, some old, some new, about the law and national security. |
| 0:08.0 | And now you get the chance to ask Lawfare directly. It's time for our annual Ask Us Anything Mailbag podcast, an opportunity for you to ask Lawfare this year's most burning questions. |
| 0:19.0 | You can submit your question by leaving a voicemail at |
| 0:22.1 | 202-643-8474 or by sending a recording of yourself asking your question to Ask Us Anything Lawfare |
| 0:32.8 | at gmail.com by December 16th. |
| 0:37.8 | What it is doing is saying that things that were perfectly legal between 2022 and the |
| 0:45.4 | inaction of this legislation are now poof, illegal and can be recovered $500,000 per instance |
| 0:54.0 | against. |
| 0:55.2 | It's the Lawfare podcast. I'm Benjamin Wittes, editor-in-chief of Lawfare, |
| 1:00.5 | with Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpet and Senior Editor Michael Feinberg. |
| 1:07.7 | To the extent there was media coverage of this bill, it was uniformly negative, and, you know, individuals in competitive races, which are coming up, realized that if they support this, it really looks like they're supporting millions of dollars of self-dealing for some of the most |
| 1:30.9 | powerful people in the country. You probably didn't notice, but Congress passed an important |
| 1:37.4 | piece of legislation to give senators the ability to recover large amounts of money when the government conducts |
| 1:47.6 | surveillance, even lawfully, that may touch their phone records. Why? Because January 6th, you know, |
| 1:58.0 | we're talking all about it today. Natalie, get us started. Most people missed that |
| 2:05.0 | these piece of legislation exists. It came about in the context of reopening the government. |
| 2:12.1 | What is it? And why should anyone care? So this legislation, which was actually amending a different piece of |
| 2:21.7 | legislation separate from the appropriations bill, everyone was focused on to end the government |
| 2:26.7 | shutdown, but was passed as part of the deal that ended the shutdown, is legislation that |
| 2:32.9 | creates a cause of action for senators to get as a remedy up to |
| 2:38.0 | $500,000 per instance when their data is accessed by the government, including in connection |
| 2:46.1 | with lawful investigations. |
... |
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