FBI misused surveillance tool on Jan. 6 suspects, BLM arrestees and others
Washington Post
23-05-19 17:44
The FBI has been accused of misusing Section 702, a powerful digital surveillance database, more than 278,000 times against crime victims, January 6 riot suspects, and people arrested protesting the death of George Floyd. The FBI took data from 19,000 donors to a congressional candidate, believing that the campaign was a “target of foreign influence”. Section 702 was established in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks to target foreign intelligence and terrorism, and it is authorised to search this database only when foreign intelligence information is believed to be produced or when evidence of crimes is sought. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has warned the FBI about its compliance errors and delays in fixing them, despite stating regular queries for instances of abuse. FBI officials say the database has already been fixed since the discovery of the errors. This misuse poses a potential problem for the FBI as it could weaken Congress’s support to renew the law as it is set to expire at the end of this year.