702 Reasons The FBI Inappropriately Spied On U.S. Citizens

The White House Recommends New Reforms On FBI Surveillance Capabilities

Photo by David Trinks on Unsplash

The Federal Bureau of Investigations is getting a stern talking to this week and may well be grounded from using one of its favorite surveillance tools after the release of a new report on FISA’s notorious Section 702 on Monday by a White House Intelligence Advisory Board.

For those of you not hip to all the intelligence gathering mechanisms that have been unleashed upon us during the United States’s never ending War On Terror, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA as it is affectionately called…

“…allows the government to conduct targeted surveillance of foreign nationals living outside the U.S. without needing to obtain a warrant. It has become increasingly controversial over the years.”

Well, apparently the good folks at the FBI have been using it to spy on U.S. citizens instead. Color me shocked. How this works is that while the laws surrounding Section 702 specifically state that it is not to be used to spy on U.S. citizens what ends up happening is that in the course of its use data on U.S. citizens, taken when they are talking or interacting with foreign nationals, does get vacuumed up.