The queries targeted people involved in Jan. 6 and George Floyd protests, and donors to a failed congressional candidate
The FBI improperly used warrantless search powers against U.S. citizens more than 278,000 times in the year ending November 2021, according to an unsealed Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) filing.
U.S. citizens covered in that improper effort included people involved in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021; George Floyd protesters during the summer of 2020; and donors to a failed congressional candidate, the filing said.
Section 702 of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) allows the government to conduct targeted surveillance of non-U.S. persons located abroad to acquire foreign intelligence information. When U.S. citizens are flagged as part of these investigations, the FBI takes over the process of querying them for possible security reasons.
The analyst who ran the query advised that the campaign was a target of foreign influence, but NSD [National Security Division] determined that only eight identifiers used in the query had sufficient ties to foreign influence activities to comply with the querying standard," the filing stated.
It is unclear to which congressional campaign the filing is referring. Fox News has learned the candidate was not a member of Congress and did not win his or her election.
The filing also said another batch of queries was made in June 2020, "using identifiers of 133 individuals arrested in connection with civil unrest and protests between approximately May 30 and June 18, 2020."
They posted FBI agents into school parking lots to take down the license plates of concerned parents attending school board meetings.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/fbi-improperly-used-warrantless-search-powers-278000-times-2021-fisa-court-filing-reveals
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