FBI warrantless searches of Americans' data more than doubled from 2020 to 2021, ODNI report

[Geee]

Just The News

The FBI collected data from nearly 3.4 million Americans in 2021, more than double the over 1.3 million in 2020.

The FBI more than doubled the number of warrantless searches it conducted of Americans' communications data from 2020 to 2021, according to a report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

 

The report released on Thursday explains how U.S. intelligence agencies use Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows for surveillance without a warrant of electronic communications data stored by U.S. internet service providers. ODNI pointed out that this year's report is the first to track the FBI's use of "unminimized Section 702 collection," which is raw data that the National Security Agency collects.

The FBI used Section 702 to collect data from nearly 3.4 million Americans in 2021, more than double the over 1.3 million in 2020. Those two years are the only ones for which the report provides statistics.

In a Friday press briefing on the report, a senior FBI official said that the 3.4 million figure "is certainly a large number," the Wall Street Journal reported. "I am not going to pretend that it isn't."

[Valin]

1 hour ago, Geee said:

Just The News

The FBI collected data from nearly 3.4 million Americans in 2021, more than double the over 1.3 million in 2020.

The FBI more than doubled the number of warrantless searches it conducted of Americans' communications data from 2020 to 2021, according to a report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.