After years of continuous, unrepentant abuse of surveillance powers, the FBI is facing the real possibility of seeing Section 702 curtailed, if not scuttled entirely.
Section 702 allows the NSA to gather foreign communications in bulk. The FBI benefits from this collection by being allowed to perform “backdoor” searches of NSA collections to obtain communications originating from US citizens and residents.
There are rules to follow, of course. But the FBI has shown little interest in adhering to these rules, just as much as the NSA has shown little interest in curtailing the amount of US persons’ communications “incidentally” collected by its dragnet.
[…]
Somehow, the FBI director managed to blurt out what everyone was already thinking: that the FBI needs this backdoor access because it almost never has the probable cause to support the search warrant normally needed to access the content of US persons’ communications.
“A warrant requirement would amount to a de facto ban, because query applications either would not meet the legal standard to win court approval; or because, when the standard could be met, it would be so only after the expenditure of scarce resources, the submission and review of a lengthy legal filing, and the passage of significant time — which, in the world of rapidly evolving threats, the government often does not have,” Wray said.
Holy shit. He just flat-out admitted it: a majority of FBI searches of US persons’ communications via Section 702 are unsupported by probable cause
[…]
Unfortunately, both the FBI and the current administration are united in their desire to keep this executive authority intact. Both Wray and the Biden administration call the warrant requirement a “red line.” So, even if the House decides it needs to go (for mostly political reasons) and/or Wyden’s reform bill lands on the President’s desk, odds are the FBI will get its wish: warrantless access to domestic communications for the foreseeable future.
Robin Edgar
Organisational Structures | Technology and Science | Military, IT and Lifestyle consultancy | Social, Broadcast & Cross Media | Flying aircraft