We all deserve privacy in our communications, and part of that is trusting that the government will only access them within the limits of the law. But at this point, it’s crystal clear that the FBI doesn’t believe that either our rights nor the limitations that Congress has placed upon the bureau matter when it comes to the vast amount of information about us collected under FISA Section 702.
The latest exhibit in this is in yet another newly declassified opinion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). This opinion further reiterates what we already know, that the Federal Bureau of Investigation simply cannot be trusted with conducting foreign intelligence queries on American persons. Regardless of the rules, or consistent FISC disapprovals, the FBI continues to act in a way that shows no regard for privacy and civil liberties.
According to the declassified FISC ruling, despite paper reforms which the FBI has touted that it put into place to respond to the last time it was caught violating U.S. law, the Bureau conducted four queries for the communications of a state senator and a U.S. senator. And they did so without even meeting their own already-inadequate standards for these kinds of searches.