Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle on May 19 expressed alarm after an unsealed court order revealed the FBI misused a controversial surveillance tool to collect intelligence on U.S. citizens, including individuals suspected of involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol breach and George Floyd protests.
The details of the inappropriately collected information were outlined by Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Judge Rudolph Contreras in a heavily-redacted court opinion (pdf) released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Friday.
In his April 21, 2022, opinion, Contreras noted that the FBI had frequently violated its own strict standards of use for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) database, which contains a trove of electronic communications and other foreign intelligence information….