FISA Court Ruling Admonished FBI For Abusing NSA Data To Conduct Surveillance On Americans

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court chided the FBI for what appeared to be systemic abuse of its surveillance authority in 2017 and 2018, saying the bureau collected communications on more than 3 million American’s through the National Security Agency’s database, according to a new court ruling.

The October 2018 ruling — first released to the public last week — is highly redacted but still reveals the concerns of the the secret court. U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg, who serves in the District of Columbia and the FISA court, wrote in his decision that the bureau abused its surveillance authority more than other agencies under review. His decision revealed that the bureau had mined data on more than 3.1 million ‘U.S. Persons’ in 2017. The FBI’s numbers soar in comparison to the 7,500 combined searches by the CIA and NSA during the same year.

FISA Court Has Exposed Surveillance Abuse Before

It is not the first time the FISA court has admonished what it deems illegal surveillance by the FBI and other government agencies. In 2017, this reporter published a FISA-court opinion that revealed that during the Obama Administration, the NSA had routinely intercepted and conducted reviews of American citizen communications in violation of the Constitution. Then the court noted that it was a massive abuse of the government’s foreign-intelligence-collection authority. Further, the then Obama administration failed to disclose its unlawful surveillance of...

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