FBI Use of FISA Database for U.S. Surveillance Drops while CIA’s Rises
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) use of a foreign intelligence database to obtain information on U.S. persons, continues to drop dramatically.
According to a new report from the Office of the Director Intelligence (ODNI), the FBI’s “U.S. person queries” made under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) plunged from 57,000 in 2023 to just 5,518 in 2024.
In 2022, the FBI made over 120,000 queries.
Section 702 allows the U.S. government to collect the communications of targeted foreigners located in other countries without a warrant— including when they are in contact with Americans or other people inside the U.S.
The report credits the adoption of tighter rules governing the program, including a requirement that the FBI enter a justification for a database query on an American before searching, for the drop in queries.
CIA, NSA, NCTC Queries Rise
It’s a different story with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC).
The number of queries made by those agencies for U.S. persons increased from over 3,700 to over 7,800. The report says cyberthreats to U.S. infrastructure, the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, and threats related to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), were the reasons for the increased queries.
ODNI stresses that the agency queries remain in range for prior years.
FISA Reauthorization Fight
In April 2024, President Biden signed legislation reauthorizing FISA for two years just before it was due to expire.
National security advocates say the law is vital to protecting the U.S. and credit it with disrupting terrorist plots, preventing cyber-attacks, and foreign espionage among other successes.
But opponents say it tramples on Americans’ civil liberties and have been concerned about government analysts and law enforcement agents running improper searches on Americans.