According to estimates, the Federal Bureau of Investigation performed up to 3.4 million searches on Americans’ electronic data without a warrant last year, according to US intelligence sources.
The information was made public as part of the Director of National Intelligence’s Annual Statistical Transparency Report. Despite the fact that the report is published every year, the search disclosure is new.
In fact, it’s the first time a US intelligence agency has revealed how many times the FBI has accessed Americans’ data under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a program enacted in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to allow the US to spy on non-Americans abroad.
The National Security Agency collects intelligence from overseas correspondence that it believes may be linked to a security threat under Section 702, but occasionally Americans’ data is swept up in the process. The FBI then examines the data for information on the United States.
The Journal stated in its story that the discovery will almost certainly rekindle long-standing worries in Congress about government monitoring and privacy.
It also arrives at an appropriate moment. When Section 702 is up for renewal at the end of the year, privacy groups will be keen to point to the 3.4 million searches statistic in an attempt to get it repealed.
Dustin Volz, a cybersecurity and intelligence writer based in Washington, D.C., was careful to point out in the post that intelligence officials are not implying that the searches were wrong or unlawful, no matter how sinister the technique may appear.
Instead, authorities claim that the FBI’s ability to use the program to conduct searches is still a critical element of its job to defend the country from national security threats.
Moreover, officials from the Biden administration said that the overall number of searches is likely to be far fewer than 3.4 million owing to significant challenges in collecting and sorting the data. Each search for a person’s name, phone number, email address, or social security number, for example, counts as one search.
Officials have recognized, however, that the large number in the study is likely to cause concern.
