FBI abused mass surveillance database to spy unlawfully on U.S. residents

In the United States, newly-published documents have revealed “persistent and widespread” violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by U.S. spy agencies.

In recent days, a pair of heavily-redacted opinions by the FISA Court were made public, showing that in recent years the FBI misused a foreign intelligence database more than 278,000 times to surveil U.S. citizens.  The NSA and CIA also carried out thousands of warrantless queries.

Among those targeted were journalists, political commentators, and Black Lives Matter protesters arrested after the killing of George Floyd.

The data was gathered under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, which permits the mass surveillance of U.S. residents’ digital communications without a warrant, as long as at least one party is a foreign national.