The FBI violated its own rules in the investigations of the Capitol assault and the protests over the death of George Floyd.
A court claims that agents violated regulations by using a huge foreign intelligence file in connection with these incidents.
This Friday, a court order was released detailing that FBI officials violated their own standards when they attempted to seek to link foreign intelligence sources to the 2021 Capitol insurrection and the 2020 racial protests sparked after the death of George Floyd.
The report, which exposes thousands of transgressions by government officials, was requested last year by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Many parts of it are censored.
According to the report, improper queries of foreign intelligence information were repeatedly made without cause. This information is collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the government to collect the communications of selected foreign nationals outside the U.S. without a warrant.
"Today's revelations underscore the need for Congress to rein in the FBI's egregious abuses of this law, including warrantless searches using the names of people who donated to a congressional candidate," Patrick Toomey, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Security Project, told the AP. "These illegal searches undermine our fundamental constitutional rights and threaten the foundation of our democracy. It is clear that the FBI cannot be left to police itself," he added.
FBI officials, who spoke on anonymity, attributed most of the breaches to confusion among the workforce and a lack of common understanding about consultation standards. They also reported that these behaviors were rectified with corrective actions, which began beginning in 2021. However, these revelations could affect congressional reauthorization of this warrantless surveillance program, which FBI and DOJ officials say is necessary to counter terrorism, espionage and international cybercrime.
