FBI personnel improperly searched an expansive foreign surveillance database for tens of thousands of phone numbers and email addresses that included those of Americans, in violation of rules put in place to protect Americans’ constitutional rights, according to a court ruling.
“The FBI procedures, as implemented, have involved a large number of unjustified queries conducted to retrieve information about U.S. persons,” said James Boasberg, a judge on the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), in an Oct. 18, 2018, ruling (pdf) that was released with redactions on Oct. 8.
