![]() ![]() ![]() An analyst doing the search cited concern that the campaign was a target of foreign influence, but the justice department said only “eight identifiers used in the query had sufficient ties to foreign influence activities to comply with the querying standard”. In addition, the FBI conducted what’s known as a batch query for 19,000 donors to an unnamed congressional campaign. The order says the FBI had maintained that the queries were likely to return foreign intelligence, though the reasons given for that assessment are mostly redacted. Other violations occurred when FBI officials in June 2020 ran searches related to more than 100 people arrested in connection with civil unrest and racial justice protests that had occurred in the US over the preceding weeks. The court order also says that 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 justice department later determined that the searches were not likely to find foreign intelligence information or evidence of a crime. Officials obtained the information despite it not having any “analytical, investigative or evidentiary purpose”, the order said. The April 2022 order, for instances, details how 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 6 riot. In repeated episodes disclosed on Friday, the FBI’s own standards were not followed. The issue has flared as the Republican-led House has been targeting the FBI, creating a committee to investigate the “weaponization” of government. Such criticism has aligned staunch liberal defenders of civil liberties with supporters of Donald Trump, who have seized on FBI surveillance errors during an investigation into his 2016 campaign. But congressional critics of the program have long raised alarm about what they say are unjustified searches of the database for information about Americans, along with more general concerns about surveillance abuses. FBI searches must have a foreign intelligence purpose or be aimed at finding evidence of a crime. That program, which is set to expire at the end of the year, creates a database of intelligence that US agencies can search. It’s clear the FBI can’t be left to police itself.”Īt issue are improper queries of foreign intelligence information collected under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which enables the government to gather the communications of targeted foreigners outside the US. “These unlawful searches undermine our core constitutional rights and threaten the bedrock of our democracy. “Today’s disclosures underscore the need for Congress to rein in the FBI’s egregious abuses of this law, including warrantless searches using the names of people who donated to a congressional candidate,” said Patrick Toomey, deputy director of the ACLU’s National Security Project. The Office of the Director of the National Intelligence released a heavily redacted version on Friday in what officials said was the interest of transparency. ![]() The violations were detailed in a secret court order issued last year by the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court, which has legal oversight of the US government’s spy powers. ![]()
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