FISA court chided the FBI for sharing NSA data on Americans with outside contractors

On May 11, the Director of National Intelligence's office declassified some rulings by a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, explaining why the National Security Agency had limited its surveillance of emails and text messages from American citizens. Most of the ruling concerned the NSA's apparently since-corrected use of Section 702 of the 2008 FISA Amendments Act, but, as Circa notes, 83 pages into the 98-page ruling, the FISA court reserved some criticism for the FBI, too.

The FBI has access to certain FISA data from the NSA, but it's required to follow privacy "minimization procedures" and it can't share the FISA data with anyone outside the government, among other restrictions. But on at least two occasions, the FBI shared raw FISA data with private contractors (whose names and functions are redacted), apparently for analytical purposes, and the court notes that the government acknowledged in October that it's "investigating whether there have been similar cases in which the FBI improperly afforded non-FBI personnel access to raw FISA-acquired information on FBI systems."

The contractors were trained on FBI minimization procedures and "stored the information only on FBI systems, and did not disseminate it further," the court said, and though the FBI has correct its identified violations involving contractors, "the court is "nonetheless concerned about the FBI's apparent disregard of minimization rules and whether the FBI is engaging in similar disclosures of raw Section 702 information that have not been reported."

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In a statement to Circa, the FBI said that "as indicated in its opinion, the court determined that the past and current standard minimization procedures are consistent with the Fourth Amendment and met the statutory definition of those procedures under Section 702." Congress has to renew the FISA Amendments Act this year, or it expires, and lawmakers are trying to figure out where to draw the line between privacy rights and legitimate counterterrorism and law enforcement.