Liberty and National Security Program co-director Elizabeth Goitein criticized the FBI's alleged abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The FBI recently announced it had made internal procedural changes meant to increase accountability for violations of internal rules regarding U.S. person queries, according to a June 13 FBI news release.
"It would be strange if millions of US person queries *didn't* eventually come up with something vaguely useful," Goitein said in a post on Twitter. "If you searched 3 million houses without a warrant, you might well turn up some evidence of something. That doesn't justify warrantless surveillance. #FixFISA"
The changes include a three-strike policy for FBI agents who violate rules and provisions to include FISA compliance in the performance evaluations of leaders of FBI field offices, the release reported. The FBI still retains the discretion to choose what to do following the third strike.
In response to the announced changes, a bipartisan coalition comprised of organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers published a joint statement.
“This is not a serious response," the statement reported. "The government wants to rely exclusively on the same kind of internal safeguards that have completely failed to protect Americans’ privacy time and time again, and has failed to meaningfully engage with the concerns expressed by lawmakers and the American public.
"Simply put, this response is completely out of touch with both the level of abuse perpetrated by intelligence agencies and other serious threats to our privacy, like government agents tracking us through data brokers," the statement continued.
"The time for the government to get serious about reform has long passed. After months of delay, the government’s only response is internal procedural changes that fall far short of the comprehensive privacy protections for Americans that are needed," the statement said. "Congress should not reauthorize Section 702 without major reforms to protect people in the United States from warrantless surveillance."
The major reforms proposed by the coalition include requiring warrants for searching Section 702 data for Americans' communications, enacting the Leahy-Lee amendment to strengthen the role of amici in FISA court proceedings and extending FISA's privacy protections to Americans' communications and other information protected by the Fourth Amendment that his acquired through overseas surveillance, according to the statement.