World News | FBI says past searches of foreign intelligence databases violated standards, but reforms have been made

WASHINGTON, May 19 (AP) — FBI officials repeatedly violated their own standards as they scoured vast foreign intelligence stockpiles for information related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riots in the United States. The 2020 Capitol and racial justice protests, according to a heavily blacked-out court order issued Friday.

FBI officials said the violations followed a series of corrective actions that began in the summer of 2021 and continued through last year. But the issues still could complicate efforts by the FBI and Justice Department to obtain congressional reauthorization of an unauthorized surveillance program that law enforcement officials say is necessary to fight terrorism, espionage and international cybercrime .

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The violations were detailed in a secret court order issued last year by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has legal oversight of the U.S. government’s spying powers. On Friday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a redacted version that officials said was intended to improve transparency. Members of Congress received the order when it was issued last year.

At issue are thousands of inappropriate searches for foreign intelligence information collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which enables the government to collect the communications of targeted aliens outside the U.S. The program expires at the end of the year, Unless it gets updated.

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The program creates an intelligence database that US agencies can search. FBI searches must have a foreign intelligence purpose or be aimed at finding evidence of a crime. But congressional critics of the program have long raised alarm over what they say is an unreasonable search of databases for information about Americans and broader concerns about perceived abusive surveillance.

Concerns about the plan have aligned staunch liberal civil liberties defenders with supporters of former President Donald Trump, who caught the FBI’s surveillance blunder during an investigation into his 2016 campaign. The issue has flared up as the Republican-led House has been targeting the FBI, creating a committee to investigate the “weaponization” of the government.

In repeated incidents disclosed Friday, the FBI’s own standards were not followed. For example, the April 2022 order detailed how the FBI could query Section 702 repositories using the names of people believed to have been at the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riots. Officials obtained the information even though it did not serve any “analytical, investigative or evidentiary purpose,” the order said.

The court order also said an FBI analyst conducted 13 inquiries of people suspected of involvement in the Capitol riot to determine whether they had any foreign ties, but the Justice Department later determined those searches were unlikely to turn up foreign intelligence information or Evidence of crime.

Other violations occurred in June 2020 when FBI officials searched more than 100 people arrested in connection with civil unrest and racial justice protests in the United States in previous weeks. The order said the FBI maintained that the inquiries likely returned foreign intelligence, though the reasons given for that assessment were mostly redacted.

In addition, the FBI conducted so-called bulk inquiries of 19,000 unnamed donors to congressional campaigns. One analyst expressed concern that the campaign was the target of foreign influence, but the Justice Department said only “eight of the identifiers used in the inquiry were sufficiently linked to foreign influence activity to meet the inquiry’s criteria.” Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Illinois, made a different statement in March, accusing the FBI of falsely searching for his name in foreign surveillance data.

Speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the government, the senior FBI official attributed most of the violations to confusion among employees and a lack of consensus on standards for inquiries.

The bureau has since made significant changes, they said, including mandatory training and an overhaul of its computer systems so that FBI officers must now enter the rationale for their searches in their own words, rather than relying on drop-down menus with pre-filled options .

An internal audit of a representative search sample showed an increase in compliance from 82 percent before the reforms were implemented to 96 percent after the reforms were implemented, one of the officials said.

The new public order also revealed that the NSA received surveillance court approval last year to use a novel and sensitive intelligence-gathering technique, although details of it remain unredacted. A second, unsealed order shows that the court granted the FBI’s request in 2021 to use specific surveillance techniques on “non-U.S. persons” for the first time, though details were again redacted. (Associated Press)

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