The FBI misused the Section 702 database — a warrantless-surveillance tool — to conduct searches on a U.S. senator, a state senator, and a state judge, a recently unclassified court filing revealed.
“In June 2022, an analyst conducted four queries of Section 702 information using the last names of a U.S. Senator and a state senator, without further limitation,” reads the ruling written by Judge Rudolph Contreras of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. “The analyst had information that a specific foreign intelligence service was targeting those legislators, but [the Justice Department’s National Security Division] determined that the querying standard was not satisfied.”
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Security Act gives the intelligence community broad power to surveil foreigners but can also be used to surveil Americans without a warrant if those Americans are in contact with foreign targets. The Biden administration is urging the first branch to renew the program, but a growing number of members of Congress have resolved that they will only renew the program if it is reformed.
The FBI recently made certain changes to the querying system to prevent misuse, such as excluding the Section 702 database by default from agents’ searches and requiring high-level approval for Section 702 queries.
The ruling is from April of this year, and Contreras approved the program for another year. He did the same last April. Contreras noted in the most recent ruling that “there is reason to believe that the FBI has been doing a better job in applying the querying standard” since the changes were made. However, misuses of the database have not been rooted out entirely.
“On October 25, 2022, a Staff Operations Specialist ran a query using the Social Security number of a state judge who had complained to FBI about alleged civil rights violations perpetrated by a municipal chief of police,” reads the filing.
Moreover, “on May 9 and 10, 2022, an FBI Staff Operations Specialist ran four queries concerning a U.S. academic without obtaining Deputy Director approval.” These four queries were later adjudged to have met the querying standard despite not having approval from the senior FBI official.
When Contreras approved the program in April last year, he noted many more abuses. The FBI had conducted 278,000 improper searches on Americans, including 19,000 donors to a congressional candidate, crime victims, people who had protested during the summer of unrest in 2020, and January 6 suspects.
In a statement about the recently unclassified ruling, FBI director Christopher Wray noted that “compliance is an ongoing endeavor.”
“We will continue to focus on using our Section 702 authorities to protect American lives and keeping our homeland safe, while safeguarding civil rights and liberties,” Wray added.
However, Patrick Toomey, deputy director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, said in a statement to the Associated Press that it is “long past time for Congress to step in.”
“As Congress debates reauthorizing Section 702, these opinions show why that can’t happen without fundamental reforms,” Toomey added.