FBI surveillance searches drop greatly

Information collected without warrants under law set to expire at end of year

WASHINGTON » FBI searches for Americans' information that is collected using a high-profile surveillance tool have “dramatically decreased” since summer 2021, when the bureau overhauled its system after a judge accused it of widespread violations, according to a new government report.

The four-page report also provides new details about internal efforts over the past two years to tighten constraints on FBI queries for information about Americans in a repository of communications gathered by a warrantless surveillance program. The New York Times obtained a copy of the report, which has not been made public, after Justice Department officials sent it to Congress this week as they lobby lawmakers to extend the law that authorizes the program.

Known as Section 702, the surveillance law will expire at the end of the year unless Congress enacts new legislation. National security officials call it a critical tool for a range of foreign intelligence gathering, but its renewal is expected to face steep political headwinds. Civil libertarians long have been critical of Section 702 and have been joined by Republicans aligned with former President Donald Trump, who has promoted skepticism of security agencies and surveillance.

Section 702 grew out of a once-secret warrantless wiretapping program started by the George W. Bush administration after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It allows the government to collect — on domestic soil and without a warrant — the messages of targeted foreigners abroad, even when they interact with Americans.

The program has drawn controversy because analysts at intelligence agencies and the FBI can search the repository of intercepted messages using identifiers of Americans — like names, phone numbers and email addresses — even though that information was collected without a warrant.

How often the FBI searches for Americans' information in the 702 repository has been murky. The bureau resisted making an estimate for years, saying that its systems — which allow agents to search many databases at once when hunting for data relevant to foreign intelligence or a crime — could not produce a reliable number.

Forced to try, the FBI last year estimated fewer than 3.4 million searches for 2021, up from fewer than 1.9 million the previous year. But the value of those numbers was not clear for multiple reasons, including how searches are tallied. A so-called batch inquiry that uses identifiers for 99 foreigners and one American, for instance, is counted as 100 searches for Americans' data. Though the unclassified report said the number of queries for Americans' information “dramatically decreased after FBI implemented its reforms beginning in the summer of 2021,” it did not specify what the more recent figures were.

A senior FBI official separately characterized the drop in query numbers as a “substantial decline” in a statement to the Times but declined to identify the 2022 estimate, saying the number was classified. But the official said the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is expected to disclose that number next month as part of an annual transparency report.

In a speech urging the reauthorization of Section 702 at the Brookings Institution on Tuesday, Matthew Olsen, the chief of the department's national security division, also said there had been “a dramatic decrease” in the total number of FBI queries about Americans and a “significant reduction” in the number of inadvertent queries since the 2021 changes.