FBI Often Does Not Have Probable Cause for Section 702 Searches, Says FBI Director ⇥ theregister.com

Jessica Lyons Hardcastle, the Register:

FBI director Christopher Wray made yet another impassioned plea to US lawmakers to kill a proposed warrant requirement for so-called “US person queries” of data collected via the Feds’ favorite snooping tool, FISA Section 702.

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“A warrant requirement would amount to a de facto ban, because query applications either would not meet the legal standard to win court approval; or because, when the standard could be met, it would be so only after the expenditure of scarce resources, the submission and review of a lengthy legal filing, and the passage of significant time — which, in the world of rapidly evolving threats, the government often does not have,” Wray said.

Wray just out and said it: many of the highly invasive searches the FBI performs could not stand the basic legal scrutiny required for a warrant. The lesson his organization learned from this is not that it should be more careful and targeted, but that it needs a way to make illegal surveillance legal on paper — and that is the power Section 702 grants.