Tuesday, May 2, 2023

Big drop in FBI warrantless searches in 2022

It seems that this is related to increased oversight:

Warrantless searches of US residents' communications by the FBI dropped sharply last year – from about 3.4 million in 2021 to 119,383 in 2022, according to Uncle Sam.

But that is still likely tens of thousands more people than should have been caught up in the FBI's domestic surveillance efforts, according to advocates for reform of Section 702 – the legislative instrument that allows warrantless snooping.

The numbers mentioned above were revealed in the annual Office of the Director of National Intelligence report, released at the end of last week. The report came just after Congress held a subcommittee hearing on Section 702 surveillance authority.

This seems to be the pertinent detail:

Additionally, over the past year the FBI implemented new processes around Section 702 searches, including mandatory query training and "enhanced approval requirements for certain 'sensitive' queries, such as those involving domestic public officials or members of the news media."

It also now requires FBI agents to "opt-in" if they wish to run a search against Section 702-acquired data, instead of having queries run against this data by default.

Well good.

4 comments:

Beans said...

3.4 million warrant-less searches? WTF? Love to see the justification behind all that and who was getting warrant-less searched.

I have my suspicions, as FedGov is no longer the People's friend, nor, apparently, has it been for a long time.

Matthew W said...

3.4 MILLION times the US government SPIED on Americans.
Does anyone think there is that much nefarious FORGEIN activity here????
I knew the day we got the Patriot a Act that Democrats would ABUSE it,

libertyman said...

Perhaps they are doing it another way now that we don't know about?

matism said...

And this is what they ADMIT to doing. Never forget "Five Eyes", now "Nine Eyes" and "Fourteen Eyes". They all work together, and what is illegal for OUR FedPigs to do to us is NOT illegal for UK FedPigs to do. And OUR FedPigs provide them an office in an AT&T building in New York City where massive amounts of comm lines happen to go through.