Subhead of the Day

Well, Well, Well, If It Isn’t the Leaning Tower of Fisa Again

—The Register

The Headline read, "FBI Abused Spy Law but Only like 280,000 Times in a Year," which is way less entertaining than the subhead on the article.

It's time for the annual report on just how badly the FBI is abusing the FISA process and the civil rights of American citizens.

Once again, they show that yhey are still the misbegotten spawn of J. Edgar Hoover:

The FBI misused controversial surveillance powers more than 278,000 times between 2020 and early 2021 to conduct warrantless searches on George Floyd protesters, January 6 rioters who stormed the Capitol, and donors to a Congressional campaign, according to a newly unclassified court opinion.

On Friday, the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court made public a heavily redacted April 2022 opinion [PDF] that details hundreds of thousands of violations of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) — the legislative instrument that allows warrantless snooping.

The Feds were found to have abused the spy law in a "persistent and widespread" manner, according to the court, repeatedly failing to adequately justify the need to go through US citizens' communications using a law aimed at foreigners.

Section 702 is supposed to permit the federal government to spy on communications belonging to foreign individuals outside of America, theoretically to prevent criminal and terrorist acts. Those communications can sweep up phone calls, texts and emails with US persons, however, and are stored in massive databases. The FBI, CIA and NSA can search these communications without a warrant.

In the doublespeak world of American intelligence, such information isn't technically stored; it's only considered so if it's actually used by analysts. And while foreign communications are fair game, the Feds can search about three levels down in data - ie, who the suspect talked to, and who their contact spoke to, and the next line in the communications link - so think Kevin Bacon levels of contacts.

………

The police power is set to expire at the end of the year unless Congress renews it. With this looming deadline, the now-unclassified court documents add fuel to Section 702 opponents' arguments that the government routinely abuses these warrantless searches.

"These abuses have been going on for years and despite recent changes in FBI practices, these systematic violations of Americans' privacy require congressional action," US Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) said in a statement. "If Section 702 is to be reauthorized, there must be statutory reforms to ensure that the checks and balances are in place to put an end to these abuses."

The FBI is being the FBI again.