Washington.- The White House recommended this Monday to eliminate the power of the FBI to carry out non-national security searches after verifying a misuse by the agency of the authority granted to it by Section 702 of the surveillance law, whose renewal is in the spotlight.
This conclusion was reached by the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB) and the Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB), which were commissioned by White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to report on the effectiveness of Section 702.
This section allows the federal government to monitor foreign citizens outside the United States to gather intelligence information in order to protect the country and its allies.
The FBI, according to his analysis, made an “inappropriate use of it” to ask questions about Americans. Although no evidence was found that he did so intentionally for political purposes, those rulings are believed to have undermined public confidence in the FBI’s ability to use that authorization.
Some of those searches included citizens detained during the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol, which took place as Democrat Joe Biden’s victory over Republican Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election was being certified.
The report estimates that most of the failures can be attributed to a lack of understanding by the FBI about the powers attributed to it by that section and to the lack of supervision measures in this regard.
To date, the Department of Justice has only identified three incidents of intentional misuse and these were subsequently appropriately handled by the FBI.
The FBI is the only agency authorized to use Section 702 for evidence of non-national security-related crimes, but that section’s goal is to monitor aliens outside the United States for information, and experts stress that the agency should restrict its use to its original purpose of identifying foreign intelligence.
Therefore, the report recommends that the attorney general, Merrick Garland, be asked to remove the authority to conduct such searches on crimes related to non-national security.
“The FBI’s use of Section 702 should be limited to foreign intelligence targets and FBI personnel should receive additional training on what foreign intelligence means,” the memo reads.
The FBI has undertaken reforms since 2021 that have achieved “significant” improvements, but that are still judged insufficient.
Section 702 expires on December 31 and experts warn that if Congress does not renew it, it could be “one of the biggest intelligence failures.” For this reason, their list of recommendations calls for greater transparency and clarity in the powers they grant to eliminate suspicions and misunderstandings.
The suggested changes also point to the creation of a new certificate that allows the collection of intelligence information on fentanyl to improve the government’s fight against this powerful synthetic opioid.
Sullivan agreed Monday that not reauthorizing Section 702 would be a mistake and supported the board’s conclusion that it be extended with reforms that serve to improve compliance and oversight.
