The IC Budget Grows, But Accountability for Domestic Collection Does Not

The Budget Keeps Rising, But Oversight Remains a Patchwork

The United States spent roughly $73.4 billion on its national and military intelligence programs in fiscal 2024, a figure disclosed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in its annual statistical summary. That money funds satellites, signals intercepts, human networks, and cyber operations across eighteen agencies. What it does not reliably fund is a unified oversight structure for domestic intelligence collection. Oversight is split between the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, the Judiciary Committees, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and various inspectors general. Each body sees a slice of the picture. None sees the whole.

Two officials familiar with the matter told me the committees still rely on agency self-reporting for many sensitive programs, a practice that leaves gaps when agencies classify information in ways that prevent staff from asking follow-up questions. A former Senate Intelligence Committee staffer said the briefings lawmakers receive are often weeks old by the time they are delivered, which means oversight is chasing events rather than anticipating them. The intelligence community insists it follows the law. That is not the same as saying the law is being followed in a manner the public can verify.

The result is a system that grows in capability while accountability stays static. Congress approves budgets with classified annexes that most members never read. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court reviews applications in secret and publishes only heavily redacted opinions. Inspectors general issue reports that land in closed hearings. Americans are told to trust the process. The process, however, was designed for a different era and a different threat.

Domestic Collection Rules Were Tightened, Then Quietly Eroded

The reforms passed after 2013 were supposed to end bulk collection of American phone records and require stronger judicial review for queries involving U.S. persons. The USA FREEDOM Act and subsequent FISA Court procedures did change the rules on paper. On paper is not the same as in practice. A senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the volume of queries targeting U.S. person identifiers has risen in recent years as analysts exploit ambiguities in the querying standard. The official noted that the legal standard is not the problem. The problem is the lack of consistent auditing to see whether analysts are stretching it.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved nearly every application submitted to it in 2023, continuing a long trend of near-universal approval. That statistic does not mean the applications are flawless. It means a one-sided court process, where the government is the only party represented, will almost always produce government-friendly results. A Justice Department official with knowledge of the case said the court has begun raising more questions in recent opinions, but those opinions remain classified and cannot inform public debate. Secrecy this broad is incompatible with self-government over the long term.

Civil libertarians warned that emergency authorities and loopholes would swallow the reforms. They were not wrong. The FBI's routine use of Section 702 queries for domestic criminal investigations, documented in declassified opinions, shows how a foreign intelligence tool migrates into ordinary law enforcement. Each migration is defended as a narrow exception. Narrow exceptions accumulate. Eventually they become the norm, and the norm becomes invisible.

Cyber Policy Demands an Accountable Intelligence Community

Cybersecurity is now the arena where intelligence collection, domestic law enforcement, and private infrastructure collide. Ransomware gangs, state-backed hackers, and criminal syndicates operate across borders, which means the National Security Agency, the FBI, and CISA must coordinate in real time. That coordination requires sharing information about threats inside the United States. It also risks sharing information about Americans who are not targets. The line between network defense and domestic surveillance is thinner than officials admit in public.

Two officials familiar with the matter said recent cyber operations have involved scanning domestic internet traffic for indicators of compromise, a practice that can sweep up ordinary communications if the filters are too broad. The officials emphasized that the programs are authorized and audited internally. Internal auditing is not enough. When the same agency designs the program, runs the program, and audits the program, the public has no independent assurance that boundaries are being respected. That is why external oversight matters more in cyber policy than in almost any other intelligence field.

The conservative instinct is to trust the professionals who protect the country, and that trust is often warranted. But trust is not a substitute for structure. The Constitution does not say the intelligence community shall be trusted. It says it shall be overseen. If Congress wants the IC to keep its authorities, it must build oversight that matches the speed and scale of modern collection. That means more cleared staff, more public reporting, and real consequences for officials who mislead the committees. A $73 billion community can afford accountability. The republic cannot afford its absence.