The FBI has been scolded for improperly surveilling American citizens repeatedly in 2020 and 2021.
An unsealed Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court filing indicated improper surveillance was conducted 278,000 times, according to the New York Post.
Those under surveillance included participants in civil rights protests that followed the death of George Floyd in 2020 and participants in the events of Jan. 6, 2021.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio said FBI Director Christopher Wray “told us we can sleep well at night because of the FBI’s so-called FISA reforms. But it just keeps getting worse,” according to The Washington Post.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released the report on Friday, according to The Hill.
The FBI maintains a database of searchable intelligence, but under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, there must be a foreign intelligence purpose to conduct a search, or the FBI must be seeking for evidence of a crime, according to Fox News.
Fox reported that the FBI promised to do better, according to an unnamed senior FBI official.
“As Director Wray has made clear, the errors described in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s opinion are completely unacceptable. As a result of the audits that revealed these instances of noncompliance, the FBI changed its querying procedures to make sure these errors do not happen again,” the official said.
“We are committed to continuing this work and providing greater transparency into the process to earn the trust of the American people and advance our mission of safeguarding both the nation’s security and privacy and civil liberties, at the same time.”
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