Top Republican says FBI should be REMOVED from surveillance ‘business’ altogether after abuses

Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary, put the FBI on trial for recent abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), saying the agency should “get out of business altogether.”

Section 702 under FISA allows US federal intelligence agencies to conduct targeted searches of foreigners, but sometimes Americans are inappropriately searched during the process. The provision expires at the end of this year.

Jordan called revamping Section 702 “the most important thing we’re going to do this Congress” during a hearing Thursday by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance.

The hearing included testimony from DOJ’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz and two officials of the U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board – Chairman Sharon Franklin and Board Member Beth Williams.

‘Mrs. Franklin, you have testified that you have no idea how many Americans have been incidentally arrested and the FBI will not tell you or give you an estimate of what that number might be, is that correct?’ Jordan asked.

She replied “that’s right,” adding “the intelligence community has claimed it’s unfeasible for them to compute a meaningful number, and they haven’t.”

Jordan confirmed that there were 3.4 million Section 702 queries last year and that 30 percent of them were wrong.

The chairman said the solution would be to simply “require probable cause if you’re going to search this database” to increase privacy and protect civil liberties for Americans.

“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?’ Jordan asked.

Williams replied, “The FBI has a long way to go to regain public trust.”

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

The hearing included testimony from DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz

‘Shall we get the FBI out of the [Section 702] business at all?’ Jordan asked

“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 confidence in FISA, but is also seen as a threat to the separation of powers,” LaHood said at the conference. the House Intelligence Committee. .

“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.”

In December, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a 2021 report detailing instances of numerous FISA abuses.

It also revealed that the FBI searched records for an “unnamed” congressman and local political organizations in conducting an investigation into whether they had ties to foreign intelligence agencies.

The FBI said in a statement that the agency has made “extensive changes” since the ODNI report.

“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.