XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.politics.democrats, alt.politics.org.fbi   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns   
   From: racist.soros.cultist@splcenter.org   
      
   On 27 Jan 2022, Bob  posted some   
   news:ssvj7b$o1eb$66@news.freedyn.de:   
      
   > The FBI needs to pay for these crimes and not just the top man   
   > resigning.  The rot is everywhere in the FBI.   
      
   The FBI has misused a powerful digital surveillance tool more than 278,000   
   times, including against crime victims, Jan. 6 riot suspects, people   
   arrested at protests after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020 and   
   — in one case — 19,000 donors to a congressional candidate, according to a   
   newly unsealed court document.   
      
   FBI officials say they have already fixed the problems, which the agency   
   blamed on a misunderstanding between its employees and Justice Department   
   lawyers about how to properly use a vast database named for the legal   
   statute that created it, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence   
   Surveillance Act (FISA).   
      
   But the failures to use the database correctly when collecting information   
   about U.S. citizens and others may make it harder for the agency to   
   marshal support in Congress to renew the law, which is due to expire at   
   the end of this year. It may also create additional head winds for the   
   FBI, which has been under attack for years by former president Donald   
   Trump and his political supporters. House lawmakers aligned with Trump   
   held a hearing this week trying to show that the nation’s premier law   
   enforcement agency is biased against conservatives.   
      
   The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees Section 702,   
   has pressured the FBI to address the problems, writing in the April 2022   
   opinion that was unsealed Friday that if the agency doesn’t perform   
   better, the court will crack down and order its own changes to FBI   
   practices.   
      
   The Section 702 database is a vast trove of electronic communications and   
   other information that can be searched by the National Security Agency and   
   the FBI. The FBI is authorized to search the database only when agents   
   have reason to believe that such a search will produce information   
   relevant to foreign intelligence purposes, or evidence of crimes.   
      
   Built in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the   
   database is seen by U.S. officials as one of the prize jewels of the   
   national security apparatus. Its primary purpose is targeting foreign   
   intelligence or terrorism information. But the sweeping nature of the   
   information in the database has long worried civil rights advocates, who   
   argue that the government has proved it cannot be trusted to use the   
   system carefully.   
      
   The court “is encouraged by the amendments to the FBI’s querying   
   procedures,” Judge Rudolph Contreras of the Foreign Intelligence   
   Surveillance Court wrote in the opinion, which detailed the nearly 300,000   
   abuses logged between 2020 and early 2021. “Nonetheless, compliance   
   problems with the querying of Section 702 information have proven to be   
   persistent and widespread. If they are not substantially mitigated by   
   these recent measures, it may become necessary to consider other   
   responses, such as substantially limiting the number of FBI personnel with   
   access to unminimized Section 702 information.”   
      
   Read the opinion by Judge Contreras of Section 702 abuses by the FBI   
      
   While House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has argued   
   that the FBI has mistreated conservatives and applied a liberal bent to   
   its investigations, the examples cited in Contreras’s opinion suggest that   
   the bureau was multifaceted in its failure to live up to the legal   
   standards of the courts and the Justice Department. In a written   
   statement, Jordan said that FBI Director Christopher A. Wray “told us we   
   can sleep well at night because of the FBI’s so-called FISA reforms. But   
   it just keeps getting worse.”   
      
   In June 2020, the FBI searched for digital data and communications of 133   
   people arrested “in connection with civil unrest and protests between   
   approximately May 30, and June 18, 2020,” a time when demonstrations   
   erupted across the country over Floyd’s death under the knee of a   
   Minneapolis police officer.   
      
   That search was done, officials said, to see if there was counterterrorism   
   information about those individuals. When questioned about the searches   
   later, FBI officials said it was reasonable for agents to think the   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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