According to a heavily redacted document from an oversight court, the Federal Bureau of Investigations frequently exploited a spy database while looking into suspects in the assault of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The court document, which was made public on Friday, reveals that the FBI investigated US citizens thousands of times while using a special intelligence database that contained foreign intelligence. This confirms a long-standing worry that detractors of the program, which was implemented in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks, had.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act's Section 702, which has been used to maintain the database, expires at the end of the year. The most recent findings might jeopardize Congress' decision to renew it.
Defenders of civil rights who are ardently leftist have long accused the FBI of unfairly pursuing the Republican leader and his fans have joined forces on this issue with supporters of former President Donald Trump.
It might also strengthen Republican legislative critics' arguments against the "weaponization" of government, who have established a committee in the US House of Representatives to look into the issue.
The paper, released on Friday and issued last year by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has legal control over US government spying authorities, claims that the FBI's own guidelines were repeatedly broken.
According to the report, 300,000 abuses occurred between 2020 and the beginning of 2021.
In one instance, the FBI ran a query on the Section 702 repository using the name of a person thought to have been present in the Capitol on January 6 during the riot.
The order stated that officials obtained the data despite it serving no "analytical, investigative, or evidentiary purpose."
In a different incident, an FBI analyst conducted 13 searches on individuals suspected of taking part in the Capitol disturbance to see whether they had any connections to other countries. However, the Department of Justice ultimately found that the searches were not likely to turn up any foreign intelligence data or criminal evidence.
Other violations happened when FBI agents searched more than 100 people who had been detained in connection with the civil unrest and racial justice demonstrations that had been going on after the police shooting of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in June 2020.
Although the justifications provided for that determination are mostly redacted, the court filing stated that the FBI had maintained that the queries were likely to return foreign intelligence.
A further infraction included 19,000 donations to an unknown congressional campaign being questioned. According to officials, the case concerned a candidate who was not elected to Congress and who ran unsuccessfully.
Senior FBI officials who spoke to reporters after the report's publication on the condition of anonymity said that the majority of the infractions were caused by employee confusion and a lack of consensus regarding the querying rules.
They added that the majority of the violations took place prior to the agency implementing a number of reforms and that as a result, there have been significantly less inquiries regarding US citizens.
In the court document made public on Friday, a judge stated that if the misuse continues, the number of people with access to the database may need to be drastically reduced.
The court document, which was made public on Friday, reveals that the FBI investigated US citizens thousands of times while using a special intelligence database that contained foreign intelligence. This confirms a long-standing worry that detractors of the program, which was implemented in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks, had.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act's Section 702, which has been used to maintain the database, expires at the end of the year. The most recent findings might jeopardize Congress' decision to renew it.
Defenders of civil rights who are ardently leftist have long accused the FBI of unfairly pursuing the Republican leader and his fans have joined forces on this issue with supporters of former President Donald Trump.
It might also strengthen Republican legislative critics' arguments against the "weaponization" of government, who have established a committee in the US House of Representatives to look into the issue.
The paper, released on Friday and issued last year by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has legal control over US government spying authorities, claims that the FBI's own guidelines were repeatedly broken.
According to the report, 300,000 abuses occurred between 2020 and the beginning of 2021.
In one instance, the FBI ran a query on the Section 702 repository using the name of a person thought to have been present in the Capitol on January 6 during the riot.
The order stated that officials obtained the data despite it serving no "analytical, investigative, or evidentiary purpose."
In a different incident, an FBI analyst conducted 13 searches on individuals suspected of taking part in the Capitol disturbance to see whether they had any connections to other countries. However, the Department of Justice ultimately found that the searches were not likely to turn up any foreign intelligence data or criminal evidence.
Other violations happened when FBI agents searched more than 100 people who had been detained in connection with the civil unrest and racial justice demonstrations that had been going on after the police shooting of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in June 2020.
Although the justifications provided for that determination are mostly redacted, the court filing stated that the FBI had maintained that the queries were likely to return foreign intelligence.
A further infraction included 19,000 donations to an unknown congressional campaign being questioned. According to officials, the case concerned a candidate who was not elected to Congress and who ran unsuccessfully.
Senior FBI officials who spoke to reporters after the report's publication on the condition of anonymity said that the majority of the infractions were caused by employee confusion and a lack of consensus regarding the querying rules.
They added that the majority of the violations took place prior to the agency implementing a number of reforms and that as a result, there have been significantly less inquiries regarding US citizens.
In the court document made public on Friday, a judge stated that if the misuse continues, the number of people with access to the database may need to be drastically reduced.
