A small group of protesters marches after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison for the murder of George Floyd, on June 25, 2021, in downtown Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez File)The FBI seal is pictured in Omaha, Neb., Aug. 10, 2022. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)
A new report has found that the Federal Bureau of Investigation may have abused its own rules. A court order released to the public on May 19 stated that FBI officials repeatedly violated their own standards when they searched a foreign intelligence database for information related to the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill insurrection and racial justice protests following the police killing of George Floyd in 2020. The database is named after the act that created it, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
Here are three things to know.
The FBI has been accused of violating its Secretive Section 702 Surveillance Database rules. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees Section 702, found improper queries of foreign intelligence information collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The act allows the government to collect the communications of targeted foreigners outside the U.S. FBI searches must have a foreign intelligence purpose or be aimed at finding evidence of a crime.
The court addressed the problem in the April 2022 opinion that was just unsealed.
The Section 702 database holds a large collection of electronic communications and other data. The database is accessible for search by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the FBI.
The database was created in response to the catastrophic events of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The court order revealed that in one case, an FBI analyst conducted 13 queries of people suspected of being involved in the Capitol riot to determine if they had any foreign ties, but the justice department later determined that the searches were not likely to find foreign intelligence information or evidence of a crime, The Guardian reported.
Thousands of violations were committed, including improper searches of donors to a congressional campaign, the court papers show.
The FBI has misused the digital surveillance tool more than 278,000 times, including against 19,000 donors to a congressional candidate, The Washington Post reported.
“Today’s disclosures underscore the need for Congress to rein in the FBI’s egregious abuses of this law, including warrantless searches using the names of people who donated to a congressional candidate,” said Patrick Toomey, deputy director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, in a press statement.
“These unlawful searches undermine our core constitutional rights and threaten the bedrock of our democracy. It’s clear the FBI can’t be left to police itself.”
According to FBI officials, they have already fixed the problems. The agency said the problem was caused by a misunderstanding between its employees and Justice Department lawyers about how to properly use the database.
But there may be far-reaching ramifications as the violations could make it harder for the FBI to gain support in Congress to renew the law, which is due to expire at the end of this year.
A small group of protesters marches after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison for the murder of George Floyd, on June 25, 2021, in downtown Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez File)The FBI seal is pictured in Omaha, Neb., Aug. 10, 2022. FBI officials repeatedly violated their own standards when they searched a vast repository of foreign intelligence for information related to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and racial justice protests in 2020. That’s according to a heavily blacked-out court order released May 19, 2023. FBI officials said the violations predated a series of corrective measures that started in the summer of 2021 and continued last year. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)
Protesters march after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison for the murder of George Floyd, on June 25, 2021, in downtown Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez File)The FBI seal is pictured in Omaha, Neb., Aug. 10, 2022. FBI officials repeatedly violated their own standards when they searched a vast repository of foreign intelligence for information related to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and racial justice protests in 2020. That’s according to a heavily blacked-out court order released May 19, 2023. FBI officials said the violations predated a series of corrective measures that started in the summer of 2021 and continued last year. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)
