FBI misuses powerful digital surveillance tool hundreds of thousands of times

Image by Pexels
Image by Pexels

(Washington, DC)  --  A newly unsealed court document shows the FBI misused a digital surveillance tool more than 278-thousand times.  

The agency used the powerful tool on crime victims, those arrested at 2020 protests after the killing of George Floyd, January 6th riot suspects, and in a certain case, 19,000 donors to a congressional candidate.

The FBI said it already fixed the problems and blamed the issues on a misunderstanding between the agency and Justice Department lawyers about how to use the database.  

The database was created by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which it's named for.