Political Grandstanding, FBI’s Long History Of Surveillance Abuse May Finally Get It Booted Off The Section 702 Block

Privacy

from the hell,-I'll-take-politicized-if-that's-the-best-option dept

The FBI has had access to Section 702 surveillance and it has always abused this access. The data and communications are collected by the NSA under this authority. Once collected, the FBI hooks up to this massive data store and to perform backdoor searches on domestic targets, even though it’s only supposed to received masked/minimized domestic data from the NSA.

The Snowden leaks led to a years-long deluge of information detailing the FBI’s casual abuse of a foreign-facing surveillance program to warrantlessly obtain data and communications originating from US persons.

We’re nearly a decade on from the first Snowden leak and news of the FBI’s surveillance abuses just keeps coming. But there’s a possible reckoning on the horizon. As Dell Cameron reports for Wired, a combination of incessant abuse and political football may finally sever the FBI’s access to the NSA’s Section 702 collections.

A report on the audit, only recently declassified, found that in the first half of 2020, FBI personnel unlawfully searched raw FISA data on numerous occasions. In one incident, agents reportedly sought evidence of foreign influence linked to a US lawmaker. In another, an inappropriate search pertained to a local political party. In both cases, these “errors” attributed to a “misunderstanding” of the law, the report says.

At some point between December 2019 and May 2020, FBI personnel conducted searches of FISA data using “only the name of a US congressman,” the report says, a query that investigators later found was “noncompliant” with legal procedures. While some searches were “reasonably likely to return foreign intelligence information,” investigators said, they were also “overly broad as constructed.”

In another incident, the FBI ran searches using the “names of a local political party,” even though a connection to foreign intelligence was “not reasonably likely.”

Ron Wyden, in particular, has been hounding the FBI for years, pushing legislation to end its access to these data stores as well as incessantly demanding answers for each new revelation of abuse of this surveillance power.

But there’s something else in play in 2023. The Republican-controlled House is applying its own pressure, motivated by “deep state” conspiracy theories about the FBI’s supposed antagonism towards former president Donald Trump. It’s a partisan effort that may achieve what actually needs to be done, but for purely politically motivated reasons.

A new House panel investigating the “weaponization of the federal government” held its first hearing on Thursday, as part of the Republican majority‘s push to ramp up scrutiny of the Biden administration.

Republicans and Democrats traded attacks during the hours-long meeting for the House Judiciary Committee’s select subpanel. Chairman Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican who leads both the full committee and the new subcommittee, laid out his party’s plans.

“We expect to hear from Americans who have been targeted by their government,” Jordan said as part of a longer list of GOP grievances.

The Republicans have finally found a reason to get angry about domestic surveillance abuses. The Bush years were spent encouraging every new expansion of the surveillance state. The Obama years saw pretty much the same thing, if only because President Obama sporadically expressed concerns about information contained in the Snowden leaks. Trump’s four chaotic years fueled partisan fires by adding wild conspiracy theories to burning vitriol. Now, it’s all coming to a head.

The subcommittee is expected to probe claims that the Department of Justice, FBI and other federal agencies are biased against conservatives. Republicans have voiced a long list of concerns, alleging the department mishandled allegations against former President Donald Trump, abused its surveillance powers and retaliated against parents who spoke out at school board meetings.

The panel said Thursday’s hearing would look at “the politicization of the FBI and DOJ and attacks on American civil liberties.” Witnesses included Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., for Republicans and the House Oversight Committee ranking member, Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin.

In other words, the House subcommittee won’t stand for attacks on certain people’s civil liberties. Well, whatever works, I guess. The FBI houses plenty of Trump fans, so severing access to surveillance stores is likely to hurt the Republicans more than it helps. And I would suspect this committee doesn’t have much of an opinion about the FBI’s more standard attacks on civil liberties, which affect people many Republicans view as inherently suspicious.

DOJ investigators unearthed another incident, which in the report they say violated US attorney general guidelines: an FBI analyst using Section 702 intelligence in a way that “lacked a proper authorized purpose.” The investigators said “improper queries” were prompted by a report about an “individual of Middle Eastern descent,” whom a witness claimed “sped” into a parking lot before honking his horn. “A second individual of Middle Eastern descent” then began loading boxes into a second vehicle, said the witness, who noted some of the boxes were labeled Drano, the brand name of a drain-cleaning product.

The FBI is capable of abusing its access in multiple ways. A bipartisan effort to terminate the FBI’s use of Section 702-derived data would be preferable, but if the Republicans can end this program (or refuse to re-up Section 702 itself), we all win, no matter what the underlying intentions. But the important thing to remember is the FBI abuses access without political preference, and is far more likely to target people Republicans leaders don’t like than Republican leaders themselves.

Filed Under: doj, fbi, fisa, fisa court, fisc, nsa, section 702, surveillance