Feds rethink warrantless search stats and – oh look, a huge drop in numbers

Warrantless searches of US residents' communications by the FBI dropped sharply last year – from about 3.4 million in 2021 to 119,383 in 2022, according to Uncle Sam. But that is still likely tens of thousands more people than should have been caught up in the FBI's domestic surveillance efforts, according to advocates for …

[Bartholomew]

news media ?

Does a blog with real life interviews count ?

(full disclosure, it was a transcript of a long conversation with a dog, and their responses were mostly scratching themself with their paws and sticking their nose in my hand looking for either food or to be petted)

[CommonBloke]

Explain it to me

> It also now requires FBI agents to "opt-in" if they wish to run a search against Section 702-acquired data, instead of having queries run against this data by default.

So, you're telling me they still have all that juicy, privacy invading data, only that it's not "searched on" by default? If that's indeed the case, boy, I sure am glad that it's completely impossible for them to search through the data they have without the query count going up, huh?

[Version 1.0]

Re: Explain it to me

Are we going to start seeing emails with the title "Delivery update" and the contents : Here's your shipping information "Cannabis_Delivery_pdf.img" thus targeting everyone?

[An_Old_Dog]

NCT

FBI changed the methodology used to calculate the number of Section 702 searches

They used New Counting Technology(TM) to make their numbers look significantly less-bad, and just in time for the review!

[stiine]

Re: NCT

No, they're just not telling the truth.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: NCT

Governments have done that a lot recently. Covid, climate change and inflation to name a few.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: NCT

Get a job, Tucker.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: NCT

He was the one telling the truth!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: NCT

To believe the lies told to you by the likes of Fauci and Maddow you need to be deranged. Too much koolaid!

[Cav]

Re: NCT

Not one of those things has been subject to government lies. Only idiots deny the reality of climate change, the necessity and safety of vaccines or the effectiveness of covid control measures.

[Pascal Monett]

"an indispensable tool when it comes to fighting terrorism"

What terrorism ?

You have had one terrorist attack in your entire history, and the only reason it succeeded was because the CIA didn't do its fucking job, not because of the FBI pulling an NSA and illegally surveilling everyone.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "an indispensable tool when it comes to fighting terrorism"

Remember that the US has a very strange relationship with 'terrorism'. They were happy to fund the IRA shooting and blowing up people for several decades. The IRA were the freedom fighters against the evil British.

Since the patriot act the authoritarian wing of the uniparty has learned that you just need to call something you dislike 'terrorism' and magically you can bypass most of the laws, constitution and bill of rights to shut down your political opponents.

[Sandtitz]

Re: "an indispensable tool when it comes to fighting terrorism"

"You have had one terrorist attack in your entire history"

9/11?

How would you classify the Oklahoma City bombing or Boston Marathon Boms? Unabomber? Wall Street bombing of 1920?

US has had plenty of terrorism, much of it domestic.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "an indispensable tool when it comes to fighting terrorism"

The 1971 bombing of the capitol building

Las Vegas shooting

BLM

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "an indispensable tool when it comes to fighting terrorism"

"advancing a political goal through threats of violence"

Yup, that is BLM.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: "an indispensable tool when it comes to fighting terrorism"

SLA (1973). Bath school massacre (1927). Harper's Ferry raid (1859) – whatever your opinion of Brown's motives and whether the wrongs he wanted to right justified it, that was basically a terrorist attack. Maybe Shay's Rebellion (1786).

some

The American Revolution arguably wasn't a terrorist operation prior to its success, because it didn't have an explicit aim of advancing a political goal through threats of violence, but it wasn't all that far off. You could make a similar argument for some of the above, but the line between "terrorism" and "just regular ol' wide-spread violence and murder" gets blurry.

Even with a strict definition of terrorism it's hard to see how e.g. the SLA, Oklahoma City, Unabomber, and DC sniper attacks don't fit.

That said, Pascal's point that we lack public evidence to support the FBI's claim that they're stopping All The Terrorism seems pretty valid. You want §702? Show us something real. And even then, it needs to be scaled back dramatically.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: "an indispensable tool when it comes to fighting terrorism"

Uh, we've had a whole bunch of terrorist attacks. Sure, most of them were using artisanal home-grown terrorists, but that's just because the USA still makes the best ones.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "an indispensable tool when it comes to fighting terrorism"

Panty-fa and BLM!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "an indispensable tool when it comes to fighting terrorism"

I have very large shoes. Thankfully my brain hasn't been rotted by watching CNN, MSNPC and taking the endless jabs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pointless

The FBI doesn't need warrants or permission to do anything. They will do what they want when they want, and to or for whomever they want to.

The only time they tell us anything is to try and say they have value. I don't buy it, and certainly don't want to fund them at all.

[Arnyrimmer]

The Ameticans spy on everyone why would their own citizens be any different?