New intelligence community report reveals FBI’s warrantless searches of Americans greatly declined

A new report from the intelligence community shows that the number of Americans falsely searched by the FBI under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) has declined dramatically over the past year.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) will release its 10th annual Statistical Transparency Report for calendar year 2022 on Friday, detailing the intelligence community’s oversight work and how it ensures the protection of American civil liberties.

The report, made public Friday, and first obtained by DailyMail.com, specifically details the “extent” of the government’s use of FISA and the number of unauthorized searches of Americans by the FBI, which appears to be decreased from 3.4 million to just over 204,000 in the space of a year. That amounts to a reduction of 93.99 percent.

The report comes as Congress is tasked with enacting reforms to FISA Section 702 ahead of the year-end date for re-enacting the provision. The provision of Section 702 allows U.S. federal intelligence agencies to conduct targeted searches for foreigners, but Americans are sometimes inappropriately searched during the process.

Last April, ODNI released data for the first time for the 2021 calendar year on the FBI’s Section 702 queries, finding that the FBI conducted 3.4 million warrantless searches of Americans.

The findings sparked outrage from lawmakers on both sides of the political spectrum and called for a review of FISA. In addition, of the 3.4 million searches, about 30 percent were found to contain an error.

However, ODNI says it has used a “new methodology this year that is more in line with how other agencies count such questions.”

The agency also blamed a “double-counting method” that reached the massive figure of 3.4 million in 2021.

The 2022 report released Friday shows a significant drop in the number of warrantless searches of Americans by the FBI under section 702 — to 204,090 compared to 3.4 million last year.

“This reduction came after a number of changes the FBI made to its systems, processes, and training related to questions about U.S. persons,” ODNI explains as the reason for the significant drop.

The report also says that due to the double counting method used previously, the more accurate number for 2022 under the “duplicated counting method” should actually be 110,383 unauthorized searches by Americans – and that in 2021 it would have been 2.9 million (not 3 ,4). million).

That would amount to a reduction of 95.97 percent.

“The FBI’s deduplicated search metrics report the number of unique search terms of U.S. persons that FBI personnel have used to search non-minimized FISA Section 702 obtained information during the relevant time periods,” the report said.

The FBI used the following methodology to arrive at these numbers, which is similar to the counting methodology of the CIA and NCTC, described elsewhere in this report, for searches conducted by those agencies on databases that mix content and non-content. ‘

The top Republicans on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence are still promising to reform Section 702 by the end of the year, despite the dramatic backsliding.

Chairman Mike Turner, R-Ohio, and Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Ill., commented on the report in an exclusive statement to DailyMail.com Friday.

“While there was a sharp drop in inquiries about U.S. persons between December 2021 and November 2022, it is the job of Congress, not the executive branch, to codify reforms in FISA Section 702.”

“Without additional safeguards, a clean reauthorization of 702 is a non-starter.”

“Section 702 of FISA is an irreplaceable national security tool that allows the intelligence community to collect information from foreign persons outside the United States,” they continued.

“However, we must protect the privacy and civil liberties of the American people. That is why the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence supports reform of our foreign surveillance tools and increases transparency and accountability while preserving the critical effectiveness of FISA Section 702.”

In March, LaHood revealed that his name had been incorrectly searched by the FBI conducting a Section 702 investigation.

“I want to make it clear that the FBI’s improper questioning of a duly elected member of Congress is egregious and a violation that not only erodes trust in FISA, but is also seen as a threat to the separation of powers,” LaHood said at a House Intelligence. committee hearing.

“I have had an opportunity to review the secret summary of this violation, and it is my opinion that the congressman who was falsely questioned several times on his name alone was in fact me.”

Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, called the renewal of Section 702 “the most important thing we’re going to do this Congress” during a hearing on Capitol Hill Thursday.

“In this occasional collection, Americans are picked up. We don’t know the number, I guess it’s pretty big. They don’t want to tell us and for no apparent reason that database is searched 3.4 million times with all kinds of error rates,’ Jordan sums up.

‘Shall we get the FBI out of the [Section 702] business at all?’ he insisted.

Last December, ODNI released a 2021 report detailing instances of numerous FISA abuses.

The FBI said in a statement following the release of the ODNI report that the agency has made “extensive changes” to the search process.

“While we can’t comment on specific questions, the FBI has made extensive changes in recent years — changes that postdate the time period covered in the reports brought forward at today’s hearing — to address 702 compliance issues. including the creation of an all-new Office of Internal Audit currently focused on FISA compliance and instituting new policies requiring enhanced pre-approval requirements before certain “sensitive” U.S. person queries can be run,” said an FBI spokesman at the time.

“Sensitive” questions involving elected officials, for example, now require deputy director approval. We look forward to sharing the impact of our reforms. The FBI takes seriously its role as stewards of our 702 authorities, which are vital to fulfilling our mission to protect Americans from foreign threats from countries such as China, Russia and Iran,” the statement continued.