Privacy security

Court overseeing national security surveillance finds FBI routinely doesn't observe rules

The top federal court that oversees national security surveillance found the FBI routinely failed to observe rules meant to protect the privacy of Americans while searching through emails that were gathered without a warrant, according to a December ruling declassified Friday.

Despite identifying "widespread violations" by analysts conducting these searches, a judge still approved the warrantless surveillance program for another year, the ruling also stated.

The ruling, which was outlined in a heavily-redacted 83-page document, was part of the regular certification process for the use of surveillance techniques enabled by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), including the warrantless surveillance program that allows the US government to collect emails and phone calls from non-citizens abroad even when they are communicating with Americans.

The redacted ruling was posted Friday to a website run by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The New York Times first reported the contents of the ruling.

The work of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is mostly secret because most of the subject matter it deals with is highly classified.

While Judge James Boasberg, who is the presiding judge on the surveillance court, again signed off on the program, he also issued a scathing rebuke of the FBI, writing that "there still appear to be widespread violations of the querying standard."