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

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan put the FBI on blast for recent abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), saying that the agency should ‘get out of the business’ altogether.

Section 702 under FISA allows U.S. federal intelligence agencies to conduct targeted searches of foreigners, but sometimes Americans are improperly searched in the process. The provision is set to expire by the end of the year.

Jordan called Section 702 renewal ‘the most important thing we are going to do this Congress‘ during a hearing Thursday by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance.

The hearing featured testimony from DOJ’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz and two officials on the U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board – Chair Sharon Franklin and board member Beth Williams.

‘Ms. Franklin, you testified you have no idea how many Americans are picked up in incidental collection and the FBI won’t tell you or won’t give you an estimate on what that number may be, is that right?’ asked Jordan. 

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Jordan confirmed that there were 3.4 million queries and 30 percent of them were in error last year

She replied ‘that’s correct,’ adding ‘the intelligence agencies have asserted that it is infeasible for them to calculate a meaningful number, and they have not done so.’

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

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

‘Americans are being picked up in this incidental collection. We don’t know the number, my guess is it’s pretty darn big. They won’t tell us and without probable cause that database is being searched 3.4 million times with all kinds of error rates,’ Jordan summed up.

‘How about we just get the FBI out of the [Section 702] business altogether?’ asked Jordan. 

Williams replied: ‘The FBI has a long way to go to regain public trust.’

In March, Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Ill., revealed that his name was improperly searched by the FBI conducting a Section 702 query. 

The hearing featured testimony from DOJ’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz

‘How about we just get the FBI out of the [Section 702] business altogether?’ asked Jordan

‘I want to make clear the FBI’s inappropriate querying of a duly elected member of Congress is egregious and a violation not only that degrades the trust in FISA, but is viewed as a threat to the separation of powers,’ LaHood said during sHouse Intelligence Committee. 

‘I have had the opportunity to review the classified summary of this violation, and it is my opinion that the member of Congress that was wrongfully queried multiple times solely by his name was in fact me.’ 

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

It also revealed that the FBI searched the data for an ‘unnamed’ congressman and local political organizations when conducting an investigation into whether they had any ties to foreign intelligence.

The FBI said in a statement that since the ODNI report, the agency has made ‘extensive changes.’

‘Although we cannot comment on specific queries, the FBI has made extensive changes over the past few years – changes that post-date the period covered in the reports raised in the hearing today – to address 702 compliance issues, including standing up a whole 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 spokesperson at the time. 

‘For example, ‘sensitive’ queries involving elected officials 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 indispensable to fulfilling our mission of protecting Americans from foreign threats from countries like China, Russia, and Iran,’ the statement continued.