Judge criticizes searches about 2 lawmakers

Ruling says FBI improperly used surveillance program in overly broad manner

WASHINGTON — An FBI analyst improperly used a high-profile warrantless surveillance program to conduct overly broad searches about two lawmakers, including a U.S. senator last year, a newly declassified court ruling released Friday shows, even as the bureau has overall improved compliance with limits on the program.

In the June 2022 episode, the analyst had a legitimate reason for searching for information about the legislators, who also included a state lawmaker, in a repository of intercepts, the ruling said, because evidence suggested that they were targets of a foreign intelligence service. But the queries were too wide-ranging, using only their last names without limiting terms to screen out irrelevant material, it said.

The episode is likely to fuel criticism of the program, which is set to expire at the end of the year, as Congress debates whether or how to enact legislation to extend it.

Known as Section 702, the law traces back to 2008 when Congress legalized a version of a warrantless surveillance program secretly created after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

It allows the government to collect, from American companies like Google and without a warrant, the communications of targeted foreigners abroad in order to gather intelligence about foreign governments, terrorists and proliferators of weapons of mass destruction.

Because that can sweep in targets’ communications with or about Americans, privacy-minded lawmakers have long sought to impose greater limits on the program.

The opinion from Rudolph Contreras, the presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, did not make public the identities of the lawmakers who had been subject to overly broad searches, but the member of Congress was notified, officials told reporters in a background briefing Friday.

Still, Contreras offered cautious praise for steps the FBI had taken in 2021 and 2022 to cut down on such violations. Those include changing its computer system so that when agents conduct general searches of FBI databases, the Section 702 database is excluded by default, and requiring officials to specify their reasons for searching for an American’s identifier.

“Despite the reported errors, there is reason to believe that the FBI has been doing a better job in applying the querying standard,” he wrote.