A released court order revealed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) misused a surveillance tool while searching for intelligence relating to the January 6 Capitol riot and 2020 racial protests.
The court order was released by the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and details thousands of violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The FBI searched the database to look for people suspected of being present on January 6 with foreign ties as well as information on people arrested during the 2020 racial justice protests.
Reporting from The Hill:
Top FBI officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said most of the violations were because of confusion surrounding the standards among workers. They said the agency has made significant changes — like requiring training and overhauling its computer system so officials need to type in a justification for a search instead of clicking on preset options.
Reporting from Newsmax:
In addition, the FBI conducted what's known as a batch query for 19,000 donors to an unnamed congressional campaign. An analyst doing the search cited concern that the campaign was a target of foreign influence, but the Justice Department said only “eight identifiers used in the query had sufficient ties to foreign influence activities to comply with the querying standard.”
