FBI Nearly Triples Unconstitutional Searches of Americans in 2021

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) nearly tripled their unconstitutional warrantless searches of Americans year-over-year from 2020 to 2021, from 1.3 million warrantless searches to 3.4 million.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released data in a report showing the warrantless searches conducted under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which nearly tripled from 2020 to 2021. A senior FBI official admitted to the Wall Street Journal that the 3.4 million warrantless searches “is certainly a large number,” adding that he would “not going to pretend that it isn’t.”

“For reasons discussed more fully below, these statistics are reported separately from NSA, CIA, and NCTC due to unique variations in FBI’s data, chief among them that FBI does not count the number of unique query terms, but instead counts the total number of queries, which could include duplicate queries of the same term,” the ODNI report stated.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), a top civil liberties advocate in Washington D.C., is demanding additional transparency and accountability regarding the startling number of warrantless searches.

“For anyone outside the U.S. government, the astronomical number of FBI searches of Americans’ communications is either highly alarming or entirely meaningless,” Wyden said. “Somewhere in all that over-counting are real numbers of FBI searches, for content and for non-content – numbers that Congress and the American people need before Section 702 is reauthorized.”

“The FBI must also be transparent about the particular circumstances in which it conducted a staggering 1.9 million additional queries in 2021. Finally, the public deserves to know whether the FBI has fully addressed the extensive abuses of its 702 search authorities that have been documented for years. Baseline transparency is essential if the federal government wants to hold such sweeping surveillance powers,” he added.

Big League Politics has reported on how the FBI and other deep state organs have used fervor around the Jan. 6, 2020 protest at the U.S. Capitol to seize additional illicit power:

Internal FBI emails published by a whistleblower within the powerful federal agency reveal that Attorney General Merrick Garland authorized the use of counterterrorism tools to surveil, track and spy on parents who oppose the teaching of extremist Critical Race Theory in schools.

House Republicans obtained and published the internal emails on Tuesday afternoon…

“The Counterterrorism and Criminal Divisions created a threat tag, EDUOFFICIALS, to track instances of related threats. We ask that your offices apply the threat tag to investigations and assessments of threats specifically directed against school board administrators, board members, teachers and staff.”

A federal investigation into parents opposed to CRT followed a set of demands from the National School Boards Administration, which tarred parents who protest extremist school board officials as domestic terrorists in a letter to the White House. Internal NSBA documents reveal the letter in question had been drafted with the full cooperation of the Biden administration, in what amounts to a privatized allegation of terroristic crimes on the part of the federal government.

The NSBA would later apologize for the letter, admitting that allegations of domestic terrorism amounted to little more than slander of parents who protest at school board meetings. There’s no indication that the DOJ has halted its investigation into CRT critics, which Garland has admitted began at the behest of the NSBA.

Republicans are demanding the resignation of Merrick Garland, following what appears to be a significant abuse of power in pursuit of criminalizing dissent from CRT in schools. The documents implicate Garland in a lie to Congress, having previously testified that he couldn’t imagine a circumstance in which counterterrorism tools such as provisions of the Patriot Act would be used against school board protestors.

The FBI needs to be disbanded before it can do more damage to the rights of Americans.

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