(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The FBI abused its legislative authority last year to spy on a U.S. senator and two state officials, according to a recently unsealed opinion from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
The April 11 opinion, released Friday, assessed reforms the FBI was supposed to make when searching data obtained via Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Overall, the court’s opinion said the FBI was making strides in ensuring that agents and analysts weren’t unlawfully searching through FISA data. However, the bureau still faced many compliance issues, including the unlawful surveillance of top public officials.
According to the court opinion, an FBI analyst conducted four searches of a U.S. senator and a state senator in the Section 702 database in June 2022.
The analyst purportedly had information that a foreign intelligence agency was targeting those senators, but the court opinion said the bureau didn’t meet the legal standard to search their names in the Section 702 database.
The opinion also said an FBI staff operations specialist searched the Section 702 database using the Social Security number of a state judge “who complained to FBI about alleged civil rights violations perpetrated by a municipal chief [of] police.”
The FBI reportedly said the U.S. senator has been notified that the FBI spied on him, while the state officials haven’t been notified.
While the court opinion noted the “indications that FBI is improving its implementation of Section 702 querying requirements,” critics said the bureau’s unlawful searches must end. Section 702 expires at the end of this year unless reauthorized by Congress.
The FISA authorization has come close to sunsetting before—notably in 2020—when lawmakers up for re-election suddenly began upping their rhetoric against government surveillance and FBI corruption.
However, it was re-authorized at the last minute with the caveat that major reforms would be a top priority. Since then, it has come to light that the FBI continued to conduct unlawful FISA queries—which, as of June, were estimated to number around 278,000.
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said in a recent blog post that if Congress again renews Section 702 without major changes, then “we have become a nation of chumps.”
Turley pointed out that FBI Director Chris Wray has continued to blame his predecessor, James Comey, for the bureau’s FISA abuses. But this latest opinion showed that the abuses have continued under Wray, Turley said.
Friday’s opinion also follows a disclosure from Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Ill., in March that the FBI misused FISA to spy on him, too.
FISA reform has been one of the rare issues of bipartisan agreement in Congress. In the House Judiciary Committee, both chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and ranking member Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., agree in principle that the FBI should need a warrant to search Americans’ data under FISA.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
