Number of FBI intelligence database searches on Americans has dropped in last year, report says

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of FBI searches of a vast foreign intelligence repository for information about Americans and people in the United States plummeted over the last year from the prior 12 months, according to a U.S. government report released Tuesday.

The release of the annual report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence comes more than a week after a bitterly divided Congress voted to reauthorize a surveillance program that administration officials say is crucial for national security but that civil liberties advocates say results in privacy abuses of Americans.

The program, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, permits the U.S. government to collect without a warrant the communications of targeted foreigners located in other countries — including when those subjects are in contact with Americans or other people inside the U.S.

A key source of concern, uniting an unusual alliance of far-right Republican supporters of former President Donald Trump with Democratic champions of civil liberties, is that FBI analysts have repeatedly run improper or justified database queries about U.S. persons.

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