A Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order released to the public this Friday found, that between 2016 and 2021, the FBI, violated Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act at least 278,000 times. Sec. 702 prohibits U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies from searching the vast surveillance database collected in the name of “fighting terrorism” on “foreign” persons (think PRISM, etc.) for information on Americans unless there is a “reasonable basis to expect they would return foreign intelligence or evidence of crime.” The FISC finding had been provided to Congress in April 2022, but remained classified until yesterday, when National Intelligence Director Avril Haines made the decision to release a heavily-redacted version, out of a claimed concern for “transparency.”
EIR has not yet itself reviewed the 127-page redacted order itself (available here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23817109-adb47f54-b772-4099-b0c9-adf24ef64faa?responsive=1&title=1), but the press accounts uniformly make obvious, that despite the redactions, there is no hiding the FBI’s wanton disregard for the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition of warrantless searches.
The court specified egregious violations of the FISA law in FBI investigations both of the people and groups active in the (FBI-instigated) Jan. 6 Capitol affair and in the post-George Floyd murder protests. The FBI also was found to “routinely” check the foreign database for information on people named in police homicide reports: everyone from suspects to victims’ witnesses, next-of-kin, etc. Then there is the case where the FBI checked the foreign intelligence database for information on 19,000 American citizens who donated to an unnamed congressional campaign.
