Security News > 2020 > April > For the past five years, every FBI secret spy court request to snoop on Americans has sucked, says watchdog

The FBI has not followed internal rules when applying to spy on US citizens for at least five years, according to an extraordinary report [PDF] by the Department of Justice's inspector general.

The failure to follow so-called Woods Procedures, designed to make sure the FBI's submissions for secret spying are correct, puts a question mark over more than 700 approved applications to intercept and log every phone call and email made by named individuals.

Following a review last year of one of those successful applications that targeted a Trump campaign staffer called Carter Page, the FBI was found to have made "Fundamental and serious errors" in its application.

"We do not have confidence that the FBI has executed its Woods Procedures in compliance with FBI policy," the report states.

All of the 25 applications reviewed had "Inadequately supported facts," and "FBI and NSD officials we interviewed indicated to us that there were no efforts by the FBI to use existing FBI and NSD oversight mechanisms."

News URL

https://go.theregister.co.uk/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/01/fbi_fisa_report/