Given that the FBI effectively admitted that it had no authority to investigate the utterly bogus claims regarding former President Donald Trump and Russian collusion, it really should be no surprise again that the federal agency is back in the news again, for all the wrong reasons.
Indeed, the “law enforcement” agency has been accused of violating the law once again, specifically the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), Section 702.
As suggested by the name of the bill, the act was intended for federal agencies to conduct surveillance on foreign adversaries that had incurred sufficient suspicion.
Moreover, multiple organizations, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have recognized the bill as such.
“Section 702 is supposed to do exactly what its name promises: collection of foreign intelligence from non-Americans located outside the United States. As the law is written, the intelligence community cannot use Section 702 programs to target Americans, who are protected by the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures,” the EFF notes.
Alas, federal agencies have apparently opted to abuse FISA to smithereens by conducting illegal surveillance on Americans, not just “non-Americans.”
And, as it turns out, after the FBI got away with harassing Trump for years, the agency apparently feels emboldened to violate others’ rights.
Per a recent report from The Blaze, the FBI was recently busted for conducting illegal surveillance on an unknown senator.
“In June 2022, an analyst conducted four queries of Section 702 information using the last names of a U.S. Senator and a state senator, without further limitation,” The Hill observed.
Of course, the FBI loudly defended itself while failing to deny that it had conducted illegal surveillance on a senator, amongst other Americans, none of whom aligned with Section 702 criteria.
Yet in its typically absurd fashion, the FBI has doubled down on the use of Section 702.
“We take seriously our role in protecting national security and we take just as seriously our responsibility to be good stewards of our Section 702 authorities. Compliance is an ongoing endeavor, and we recently announced new additional accountability measures. We will continue to focus on using our Section 702 authorities to protect American lives and keeping our Homeland safe, while safeguarding civil rights and liberties,” FBI Director Christopher Wray proclaimed.
Nonetheless, Wray declared that the “errors” committed by the FBI were “completely unacceptable.”
Wray seems to be making the same claim quite often these days.
Leads one to wonder what, if anything, has really been done to ensure that the federal law enforcement agency actually follows the federal law.
Author: Ofelia Thornton