19 May 2023

YES THEY DID -- NO DENYING IT NOW: F.B.I. Violated Section 702 Surveillance Program Rules | Multiple news sources

The court document released on Friday shows the FBI used a special intelligence database containing foreign intelligence thousands of times while investigating US citizens — confirming a long-held concern that critics have had of the program, launched in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

FBI misused surveillance tool on Jan. 6 suspects, BLM arrestees and others

Crime victims, political donors and potential sources were targeted in digital searches that the FBI says have now been scaled back

By 
Updated May 19, 2023 at 4:18 p.m. EDT |Published May 19, 2023 at 1:28 p.m. EDT
FBI director Christopher A. Wray testifies during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in March. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
9 min

"The FBI has misused a powerful digital surveillance tool more than 278,000 times, including against crime victims, Jan. 6 riot suspects, people arrested at protests after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020 and — in one case — 19,000 donors to a congressional candidate, according to a newly unsealed court document.

FBI officials say they have already fixed the problems, which the agency blamed on a misunderstanding between its employees and Justice Department lawyers about how to properly use a vast database named for the legal statute that created it, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

  • But the failures to use the database correctly when collecting information about U.S. citizens and others may make it harder for the agency to marshal support in Congress to renew the law, which is due to expire at the end of this year. It may also create additional head winds for the FBI, which has been under attack for years by former president Donald Trump and his political supporters. House lawmakers aligned with Trump held a hearing this week trying to show that the nation’s premier law enforcement agency is biased against conservatives.
  • The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees Section 702, has pressured the FBI to address the problems, writing in the April 2022 opinion that was unsealed Friday that if the agency doesn’t perform better, the court will crack down and order its own changes to FBI practices.

The Section 702 database is a vast trove of electronic communications and other information that can be searched by the National Security Agency and the FBI. The FBI is authorized to search the database only when agents have reason to believe that such a search will produce information relevant to foreign intelligence purposes, or evidence of crimes.

Built in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the database is seen by U.S. officials as one of the prize jewels of the national security apparatus. Its primary purpose is targeting foreign intelligence or terrorism information. But the sweeping nature of the information in the database has long worried civil rights advocates, who argue that the government has proved it cannot be trusted to use the system carefully.

  • The court “is encouraged by the amendments to the FBI’s querying procedures,” Judge Rudolph Contreras of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court wrote in the opinion, which detailed the nearly 300,000 abuses logged between 2020 and early 2021. “Nonetheless, compliance problems with the querying of Section 702 information have proven to be persistent and widespread. If they are not substantially mitigated by these recent measures, it may become necessary to consider other responses, such as substantially limiting the number of FBI personnel with access to unminimized Section 702 information.”


Read the opinion by Judge Contreras of Section 702 abuses by the FBI


While House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has argued that the FBI has mistreated conservatives and applied a liberal bent to its investigations, the examples cited in Contreras’s opinion suggest that the bureau was multifaceted in its failure to live up to the legal standards of the courts and the Justice Department. In a written statement, Jordan said that FBI Director Christopher A. Wray “told us we can sleep well at night because of the FBI’s so-called FISA reforms. But it just keeps getting worse.”


  • In June 2020, the FBI searched for digital data and communications of 133 people arrested “in connection with civil unrest and protests between approximately May 30, and June 18, 2020,” a time when demonstrations erupted across the country over Floyd’s death under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer.

That search was done, officials said, to see if there was counterterrorism information about those individuals. When questioned about the searches later, FBI officials said it was reasonable for agents to think the searches would return foreign intelligence. 

  • The parts of the court papers describing that effort have significant redactions, making it unclear why the FBI developed its theory. 
  • The filing also doesn’t make clear how many of the individuals whose information was sought from the database were arrested while protesting police conduct, how many might have been counterprotesters or what, if anything, was done with the information gathered.

Around that same time, an FBI analyst conducted 656 queries of FISA information, apparently because the bureau was considering whether to use people as informants and wanted to check for any derogatory information, the court filing says. The FBI did not have any reason to believe that agents would find such information, officials said."

News

FBI misused database for Jan 6 suspects, racial justice protests

A redacted report from an oversight court says the agency regularly accessed a database meant for foreign investigations.

FBI
Published On 19 May 2023

The Federal Bureau of Investigations regularly misused a spy database while investigating suspects in the January 6, 2021 storming of the United States Capitol, according to a heavily redacted document from an oversight court. . .

The database has been maintained under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which expires at the end of the year. The latest revelations could threaten its renewal by Congress.

The issue has aligned staunch liberal defenders of civil liberties with allies of former President Donald Trump, who have long accused the FBI of unfairly targeting the Republican leader and his supporters.

It could also further bolster criticism from congressional Republicans, who have created a committee in the US House of Representatives to investigate the “weaponisation” of government.

In repeated episodes, the FBI’s own standards were not followed, according to the document, disclosed on Friday and issued last year by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has legal oversight over US government spy powers.

Privacy Policy

The document said 300,000 abuses were recorded between 2020 and early 2021.

In one instance, the FBI queried the Section 702 repository using the name of someone who was believed to have been at the Capitol during the January 6 riot.

Officials obtained the information despite it not having any “analytical, investigative or evidentiary purpose”, the order said.

In another episode, an FBI analyst ran 13 queries of people suspected of being involved in the Capitol riot to determine if they had any foreign ties, but the Department of Justice later determined that the searches were not likely to find foreign intelligence information or evidence of a crime.

Other violations occurred when FBI officials in June 2020 ran searches related to more than 100 people arrested in connection with the civil unrest and racial justice protests unfolding in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The court document said the FBI had maintained that the queries were likely to return foreign intelligence, although the reasons given for that assessment are mostly redacted.

Another violation included a query of 19,000 donors to an unnamed congressional campaign. Officials said the case involved a candidate who ran unsuccessfully and is not a sitting member of Congress.

Speaking on condition of anonymity to reporters after the report’s release, senior FBI officials attributed the majority of the violations to confusion among the workforce and a lack of common understanding about the querying standards.

They also said the violations predominantly occurred before the agency had made several reforms, saying the number of queries about US citizens has dropped dramatically following a series of audits.

In the court document released on Friday, a judge noted that the number of people with access to the database may need to be severely curtailed if the misuse persists."

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)