FBI Caught Again Improperly Using Spy Powers – This Time on US Senator and Other Officials
A Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinion released on Friday reveals that the FBI improperly conducted intelligence queries on a U.S. senator, a state senator and a state judge.
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows federal government agencies to conduct targeted surveillance of non-U.S. citizens located abroad using intelligence databases.
“When U.S. citizens are flagged as part of these investigations, the FBI takes over the process of querying them for possible security reasons,” Fox News notes.
Presiding FISC Judge Rudolph Contreras wrote in the April opinion, released Friday by the office of the Director of National Intelligence, that the FBI conducted queries into three individuals in 2022 that did not meet the standard established by law.
“Some violations of the querying standard coincided with failure to follow an FBI policy that requires prior Deputy Director approval to use ‘sensitive query terms’ — e.g. identifiers of domestic public officials, domestic political candidates, members of the news media, academics, and religious organizations or persons prominent within them,” the opinion stated.
Contreras wrote that in June 2022, “an analyst conducted four queries of Section 702 information using the last names of a U.S. Senator and a state senator, without further limitation.”
“The analyst had information that a specific foreign intelligence service was targeting those legislators, but [National Security Division of the Justice Department] determined that the querying standard was not satisfied,” Contreras wrote.
Then in October 2022, the judge wrote that “a staff operations specialist ran a query using the social security number of a state judge who had complained to FBI about alleged civil rights violations perpetrated by a municipal chief of police.’”
The identities of the U.S. senator and state senator, as well as the state judge are not revealed in the judge’s opinion.
Contreras wrote that despite these “reported errors” there “is reason to believe that the FBI has been doing a better job in applying the querying standard.”
The judge also highlighted how reforms the FBI undertook in 2021 appear to be “having the desired effect.” (page 83).
The FBI’s noncompliance rate was 1.8 percent of the time.
Still, it’s the second time this year that the bureau has been found improperly using its surveillance powers. A court finding unsealed in May found that during the year that ended in November 2021, the FBI conducted warrantless searches 278,000 times.
In the year ending November 2022, the FBI conducted 204,000 queries, which was a 94 percent drop from the previous year’s reporting period when the agency did almost 3.4 million searches, according to Fox News.
The subjects of the queries included those who participated in the protest surrounding the Capitol incursion on Jan. 6, 2021, as well as those who took part in the protests and riots following the death of George Floyd in May 2020.
Contreras wrote in an April 2022 opinion that “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,” the judge added.
Following the release of Friday’s report, FBI Director Christopher Wray touted the judge’s view that the FBI had improved in complying with the law.
“The 2023 FISC Opinion confirms the significant improvement in the FBI’s Section 702 querying compliance since the implementation of our substantial reforms,” he said in a statement.
“Section 702 is critical in our fight against foreign adversaries. We take seriously our role in protecting national security and we take just as seriously our responsibility to be good stewards of our Section 702 authorities,” Wray added.
“We will continue to focus on using our Section 702 authorities to protect American lives and keeping our Homeland safe, while safeguarding civil rights and liberties.”
The FBI noted in its news release that Section 702 will expire on Dec. 31 unless Congress takes action to reauthorize it.
The Associated Press reported the Biden administration supports renewal of the program, but faces bipartisan opposition in Congress.
“Many Democratic and Republican lawmakers say they won’t vote to renew Section 702 when it expires at this year’s end without major changes targeting how the FBI uses foreign surveillance data to investigate Americans,” according to the AP.
Patrick Toomey, deputy director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, said in a statement, “The FBI continues to break the rules put in place to protect Americans, running illegal searches on public officials including a U.S. senator, and it’s long past time for Congress to step in.
“As Congress debates reauthorizing Section 702, these opinions make clear why fundamental reforms are urgently needed.”
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