Just saw an interview (didn't catch the beginning so I don't know his name) who pointed out that if they have sufficient evidence for a search warrant they probably have sufficient evidence for a wiretap warrant.
The problem is the FBI seemingly thinks most any evidence warrants a wiretap...
According to a new declassified ruling from the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), FBI personnel systematically abused National Security Agency (NSA) mass surveillance data in both 2017 and 2018. The 138-page ruling, which dates back to October 2018, was only unsealed 12 months later in October 2019. It offers a rare look at how the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been abusing the constitutional privacy rights of U.S. citizens with alarming regularity. The court ruling is also a stinging rebuke to the FBI’s overreach of its ability to search surveillance intelligence databases.
The U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, itself a super-secret court that traditionally approves each and every request of law enforcement agencies such as the FBI, found that employees of the FBI searched data collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in an inappropriate and potentially unconstitutional manner. These abuses, says the FISA court, included accessing NSA surveillance data to look into the online communications of U.S. citizens, including fellow FBI employees and their family members. All told, there may have been tens of thousands of these improper queries, all of them carried out without any reasonable suspicion of a crime or illegal activity posing a risk to national security. Moreover, many of the FBI’s backdoor searches did not differentiate between U.S. citizens and foreign intelligence targets.
Simply put, the data was available to search, and the FBI willingly took advantage of every opportunity to query the NSA intelligence database. For example, FBI employees routinely used mass surveillance data to investigate potential witnesses and informants. In 2017 alone, the FBI conducted over 3.1 million searches of surveillance data, compared to just 7,500 combined searches by the CIA and NSA. This is particularly troubling because, under current FBI operating procedures, this surveillance data can only be searched if there is reasonable suspicion of crimes having taken place or clear risks to national security. And, yet, FBI employees and FBI contractors were at times searching the database to see what information they could find on U.S. citizens not at all connected to foreign intelligence matters. In short, the FBI violated Americans’ privacy by abusing access to NSA surveillance data with warrantless searches.
One of the hallmarks of the American constitutional system is the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which forbids unreasonable searches or seizures. In practical terms, it means that law enforcement officials or intelligence operatives from the FBI must get a warrant in order to search private property or private communications. In the real world, this is what protects Americans from having police show up at their door and start searching the premises for any reason possible. Instead, they must first go to a court, obtain a warrant, and then show up to search the premises.
That is what makes the uncovered FBI abuses so troubling from a privacy perspective. Over the past two years (and perhaps even longer), the FBI was essentially able to go on “fishing expeditions” to check out the emails or other online communications of U.S. citizens without getting a warrant in the first place. Apparently, few safeguards really exist to protect communications from being searched improperly.
New declassified ruling shows how FBI abused the constitutional privacy rights of U.S. citizens in 2017 and 2018 by using NSA surveillance data to conduct backdoor searches.
www.cpomagazine.com
