The ODNI recently partially declassified a
FISC ruling from one year agoThe short story is that the FISC found that the FBI was
not properly recording queries on U.S. persons from FISA and Section 702 acquired data (see Part IV.A). This was in light of the fact that the FBI had a track record of conducting
improper queries (see Part IV.B). The queries were improper as they could not credibly linked to any legitimate national security or law enforcement interest.
For example:
-"On December 1, 2017 the FBI's (redacted) conducted over 6,800 queries using the Social Security Numbers of individuals (redacted)
See Apr. 27, 2018, Notice at 2."
-"A set of queries (overlapping to some extent with the set of inadvertent queries of Section 702 data) apparently intended to return FBI documents or material.
See, e.g., May 17, 2018, Notice at 2 (redacted) May 4, 2018, Notice at 2 (redacted)"
This should be very alarming considering the following from this ruling:
"In 2017, NCTC, the CIA, and NSA collectively used approximately 7500 terms associated with U.S. persons to query content information acquired under Section 702, ... while the during the same year FBI personnel on a
single system ran approximately
3.1 million (emphasis
mine) against raw FISA-acquired information, including section 702-acquired information."
All references to the Fourth Amendment (yes they are there) in this ruling are obvious lip-service.
