Remember when this occurred during the George W. Bush administration? When they were listening to international calls involving potential terrorists and bad people? How most of those calls were between non-US citizens? But, some ended up coming into the U.S.? And a few involved U.S. citizens, so, the NSA retroactively obtained warrants? And the U.S. Credentialed Media, along with civil rights groups like the ACLU, went ballistic? How it was constantly in the news? Constant opinion pieces? Of course, that ended when Obama came into office, and his DOJ thought this was fine. Some lefties raged, but, the media pretty much ignored it. And now that Brandon is in office?
The FBI conducted up to 3.4 million warrantless searches of Americans’ electronic data last year including 1.9 million related to a cyber threat from Russia, according to an annual transparency report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Friday.
The report is the first time that the US intelligence community has disclosed even an approximate number of the FBI’s searches of American data using the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The law is focused on threats emanating from outside of the United States, but also allows the FBI, the CIA and others to search data for Americans’ information provided there is a validly predicated foreign intelligence purpose.
The report does not suggest that the FBI acted improperly. The report highlights the big trove of intelligence data that the bureau can tap in pursuing hackers, spies and terrorists.
More than half of the FBI’s queries were related to attempts to compromise US critical infrastructure by foreign cyber actors in early 2021, according to the report. That includes about 1.9 million queries related to one particular cyber threat from Russia against US critical infrastructure, according to the FBI.
There’s only a few more paragraphs in this CNN piece, which is written 100% as straight news. Now, imagine this was the Trump admin admitting to this: the piece would have been an opinion piece, blasting Trump personally for allowing the FBI to search American’s data without a warrant. Heck, they would have been upset that foreign national terrorist’s data was searched without a warrant. The NY Times, Washington Post, ABC News, etc would have front page stories and opinions. The ACLU would be up in arms. Lefty blogs would be screeching about Orange Hitler Man Bad. Pelosi and other elected Dems would be taking to the Congressional floor calling Trump The Worst and considering impeachment again.
Now? Crickets.
Mind you, I have zero problem for those who are not American citizens and not on American soil. They aren’t afforded protections from the Constitution.
I delved into the old Surrender Monkey folder, that was a graphic used for some of the posts during the Bush admin over this subject.
[…] Also see: William Teach: FBI Conducted Almost 3.4 Million Warrantless “Wiretaps” In 2021, Media Mostly Silent […]
Who will watch the watchers?
The actual sad part and the part that truly hurts all Americans the most is these men and women in the FBI who did this knew what they were doing was not simply illegal but anti-American and they still did it over and over. I think about all the years I served, many times calling those who were out of line or just on the border who have forgotten who we were supposed to serve and here we have members of one of the most elite organizations in the United States doing such horrible things to their fellow Americans. I am do dissapointed in all of them; those that did this and those who work with them who refuse to call them out.
The problem with calling them out is they will hide behind some crap, like,”Grow up! What we do is in defense of the Republic! Who are you to question us?” They seem to me to be drunk on power and could not care less about our quaint notions of due process, individual rights, etc.
Teach
Are you suggesting that this behavior was also not occurring under Trump? That Trump was allowing Russian hackers to try and breech our security?
You lol think this all just began under Biden? Trumps buddy’s Putins hackers were also doing this before. I applaud there efforts to prevent those Russian hackers, working with Putins blessing, from damaging our vital infrastructure.
Hairy. dude. We(Patriots and not demofascists, authoritarian loving communists) are suggesting it should not occur during A N Y PRESIDENT!!!!!
It’s a violation of the constitution. This simply shows how out of control the 3 letter agencies are in this and other countries. If they get away with ABC….pretty soon they will be doing DEF and XYZ.
John-are you suggesting that it did? If you have proof of those assertions, by all means show us.
This was an annual report, but yes, it has been going on for a while now, under the younger President Bush, under President Barack Hussein Obama, and under President Trump. Some was probably happening under President Clinton as well, though the internet was really in its infancy then, and the Department of Fatherland Security had not yet been created. The security agencies will do everything away with which they can get.
As early as the Carter Administration, the National Security Agency employed what they called “Traffic Analysts,” people who monitored all foreign transmissions and attempted to infer what was going on, and where, simply from the volume of transmissions picked up. Of course, the NSA attempted to decipher all of those transmissions.
Naturally, some foreign transmissions had American receivers, and some of those Americans returned the transmission. Once it went to a foreign recipient, reading it without a warrant was considered legal, or a warrant could be obtained from the toady FISA Court judges; there was, and is, no notification to, or allowed defense by, the targets of such warrants. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 is a United States federal law that establishes procedures for the physical and electronic surveillance and the collection of “foreign intelligence information” between “foreign powers” and “agents of foreign powers” suspected of espionage or terrorism.
There was no suggestion that this was illegal. If we don’t like it we need Congress to change the laws.
In the early 2000s, a colleague was invited by a friend to visit Turkey, and they traded emails to make arrangements. She was contacted by authorities to ‘splain herself.