An advisory board to President Biden has advisable limiting the F.B.I.’s potential to make use of a controversial warrantless surveillance program to hunt for details about Americans, even because it urged lawmakers to resume the legislation that authorizes it.

The panel, generally known as the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, advised barring the bureau from looking out a database of intercepted data when in search of proof about Americans in prison investigations that don’t contain international intelligence. Under the proposal, nonetheless, the F.B.I. may nonetheless conduct such searches in investigations associated to nationwide safety.

The board — composed of personal residents who’ve safety clearances, though some are former senior authorities officers — delivered the advice in a declassified 39-page report made public on Monday. It got here as Congress was debating whether or not to increase the legislation authorizing this system, generally known as Section 702, which is ready to run out on the finish of the yr.

The White House was finding out the advice, a senior administration official stated in a background briefing on Monday. In an announcement, the F.B.I. didn’t straight tackle the proposed new restrict however stated, “We agree that Section 702 should be reauthorized in a manner that does not diminish its effectiveness, as well as reassures the public of its importance and our ability to adhere rigorously to all relevant rules.”

Under Section 702, the federal government can gather — from American firms like Google and AT&T and and not using a warrant — the communications of focused foreigners overseas, even when they’re speaking to or about Americans. The program traces again to a as soon as secret warrantless surveillance program that the George W. Bush administration began after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist assaults. After this system was uncovered, Congress legalized a model of it.

The advisory board additionally made a number of different suggestions.

They included searching for courtroom approval to make use of Section 702 for counternarcotics functions. The U.S. authorities can at the moment use this system to collect details about different governments, counterterrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The panel additionally advisable that companies just like the F.B.I. which have entry to uncooked Section 702 data emulate an present National Security Agency rule that two officers log out that requirements have been met earlier than conducting any question utilizing Americans’ identifiers, like their names, cellphone numbers or e-mail addresses.

How the federal government can use its database of intercepts which were already collected when scrutinizing Americans has been a topic of heated debate.

Limiting the F.B.I. to sift by way of Section 702 data for investigations associated to international intelligence would put it on the identical footing as different companies which have entry to the database of intercepted data, just like the C.I.A. or the N.S.A.

In apply, purely prison investigations involving Americans and with none nexus to nationwide safety — like espionage or worldwide terrorism — are a small a part of how the F.B.I. has used Section 702. It made 13 purely prison queries utilizing Americans’ identifiers in 2021 and 16 in 2022, in response to a latest report — years throughout which the general variety of American queries have been about 3.4 million and simply over 200,000.

Still, the notion that Section 702 creates a backdoor to the Fourth Amendment by permitting the F.B.I. to learn personal communications to or from an American and not using a warrant in peculiar prison contexts has raised specific alarm. In 2018, Congress required the F.B.I. to get a courtroom order earlier than analysts may learn any materials that got here up in response to purely prison inquiries when there was an open prison investigation, however the bureau by no means obtained such an order, resulting in some compliance incidents.

Civil libertarians have lengthy wished to finish or place extra limits on this system due to its affect on the privateness of Americans, however Congress reauthorized it in 2012 and 2018. This cycle, nonetheless, these skeptics have been joined by Republicans who’ve aligned themselves with former President Donald J. Trump’s hatred of the F.B.I. In specific, he has been aggrieved by the a number of investigations into him, together with an inquiry into ties between Russia and his 2016 marketing campaign, in addition to a court-authorized search of his Florida membership and residence final yr.

Repeated findings that F.B.I. analysts violated requirements limiting when the bureau could lawfully search the repository utilizing identifiers of Americans have supplied fodder to critics.

While the F.B.I. has enacted adjustments supposed to enhance compliance, like requiring analysts to offer a written justification of why every search of the Section 702 repository meets the usual, it isn’t clear that might be sufficient to steer lawmakers to reauthorize this system. In making its suggestion, the advisory board advised it may fulfill curiosity in imposing extra limits on the F.B.I. as a part of any reauthorization invoice.

“The cost of failure is real,” the report stated. “If Congress fails to reauthorize Section 702, history may judge the lapse of Section 702 authorities as one of the worst intelligence failures of our time.”

But the board rejected as unjustified the extra sweeping reform proposal that libertarians have lengthy advocated: to require the federal government to acquire a courtroom warrant earlier than utilizing Americans’ identifiers to go looking the repository.

Requiring a courtroom order earlier than doing so, the board stated, would forestall intelligence companies from discovering threats to the nation in a well timed method as a result of there can be too many requests to course of.

“Often, there is not enough information to prove probable cause when a U.S. person query is being conducted,” it added. “It likely cannot be determined at that point whether the U.S. person is a potential victim or perpetrator involved in a foreign threat to the United States.”