Read much more at Epoch Times ^ | October 8, 2019 | PETR SVAB
FBI personnel improperly searched an expansive foreign surveillance database for tens of thousands of phone numbers and/or email addresses that included those of Americans—in violation of rules put in place to protect Americans’ constitutional rights, according to a court ruling.
“The FBI procedures, as implemented, have involved a large number of unjustified queries conducted to retrieve information about U.S. persons,” said James Boasberg, judge on the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in an Oct. 18, 2018 ruling (pdf) that was released with redactions on Tuesday.
The database aggregates data collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows warrantless surveillance “of persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States to acquire foreign intelligence information.”
The FBI is allowed to query the database as long as the results are “reasonably likely to return foreign-intelligence information or evidence of crime.”
But, since April 2017, when the Section 702 surveillance was last certified by FISC, “a large number of FBI queries” didn’t comport to the rules.
The government argued that such queries generally resulted from “fundamental misunderstandings by some FBI personnel [about] what the standard ‘reasonably likely to return foreign intelligence information’ means.”
FISC was still holding back on the 2018 certification on July 12 (pdf), saying FBI documentation procedures lack a means to differentiate “whether a particular query term relates to a United States person or a non-United States person.”
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Shouldn’t the list of everyone queried be made PUBLIC so all those injured can SUE THE GOVERNMENT AGENTS/CONTRACTORS PERSONALLY IN FEDERAL COURT???
FBI personnel improperly searched an expansive foreign surveillance database for tens of thousands of phone numbers and/or email addresses that included those of Americans—in violation of rules put in place to protect Americans’ constitutional rights, according to a court ruling.
“The FBI procedures, as implemented, have involved a large number of unjustified queries conducted to retrieve information about U.S. persons,” said James Boasberg, judge on the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in an Oct. 18, 2018 ruling (pdf) that was released with redactions on Tuesday.
The database aggregates data collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows warrantless surveillance “of persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States to acquire foreign intelligence information.”
The FBI is allowed to query the database as long as the results are “reasonably likely to return foreign-intelligence information or evidence of crime.”
But, since April 2017, when the Section 702 surveillance was last certified by FISC, “a large number of FBI queries” didn’t comport to the rules.
The government argued that such queries generally resulted from “fundamental misunderstandings by some FBI personnel [about] what the standard ‘reasonably likely to return foreign intelligence information’ means.”
FISC was still holding back on the 2018 certification on July 12 (pdf), saying FBI documentation procedures lack a means to differentiate “whether a particular query term relates to a United States person or a non-United States person.”
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Shouldn’t the list of everyone queried be made PUBLIC so all those injured can SUE THE GOVERNMENT AGENTS/CONTRACTORS PERSONALLY IN FEDERAL COURT???
