FBI Spied on 3.3 Million Americans Without a Warrant, Report Reveals

After court-ordered information revealed that the FBI collected the data of over 3 million Americans without a warrant, top House Republicans are demanding answers.

November 2020 decision by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court-which serves as a watchdog for U.S. intelligence agencies-required that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence report "The number of U.S. person queries run by the FBI against Section 702-acquired information."

In accordance with these new requirements, ODNI's recently-released Annual Statistical Transparency Report included data on how often the FBI gathered information on American citizens using section 702 in 2021.

The ODNI report also admitted that on at least four occasions, the FBI failed to get FISC approval before accessing the contents of information collected under section 702.

In November 2020, the FISC announced that "The government reported numerous incidents" in which the FBI reviewed information gathered under section 702 without obtaining proper permission from the court.

In their letter to Wray, Jordan and Turner laid out a laundry list of questions about the report, demanding further transparency and explanations on the revelation that the FBI has often overstepped its legal authority to spy on American citizens.

Among other questions, they requested a full accounting of all 3,394,053 citizens who showed up in FBI queries and "[the] number of preliminary or full investigations into any U.S. citizens the FBI has initiated as a result of information obtained through any of these U.S. person queries, and the nature of the predication for each such investigation.

https://neonnettle.com/news/19156-fbi-spied-on-3-3-million-americans-without-a-warrant-report-reveals