Revelations that the FBI committed serious errors in wiretapping a former campaign aide of US President Donald Trump have spurred bipartisan calls for change to the government’s surveillance powers, including from some Republicans who in the past have voted to renew or expand those powers.
Anger over the errors cited in a US Department of Justice inspector general’s report of the Russia investigation has produced rare consensus from Democrats and Republicans, who otherwise have had sharply different interpretations of the report’s findings.
The report said that the FBI was justified in investigating ties between the campaign and Russia, but criticized how the investigation was conducted.
The report cited flaws and omissions in the US government’s warrant applications under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), documenting problems with a surveillance program that Democrats and civil libertarians have long maintained is opaque, intrusive and operates with minimal oversight.
They now have been joined by Republicans who are irate that FBI officials withheld key information from judges when they applied to eavesdrop on former Trump aide Carter Page.
“I’m still trying to get my arms around the proposition that a whole bunch of conservative Republicans who’ve logged years blocking bipartisan FISA reforms are now somehow privacy hawks,” said US Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat.
It is unclear what steps, if any, US Congress could or would take to rein in the FBI’s power under the surveillance law and it remains to be seen whether outrage over the way a Trump ally was treated would extend to less overtly political investigations.
US Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who has recommended changes, said his office would conduct an audit of how the FBI applies for warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said that the bureau is making its own changes to ensure more accuracy and completeness in warrant applications. That includes tightening up layers of review and record-keeping.
“I think we’re entrusted with very significant power and authority. The FISA statute provides the FBI with absolutely indispensable tools that keep 325 million Americans safe everyday, but with that significant power and authority comes a responsibility to be scrupulously accurate and careful, and I think that’s what the FBI does best,” Wray said on Monday.
The 1978 law authorizes the FBI to seek warrants to monitor the communications of people they suspect of being agents of a foreign power, such as potential terrorists or spies.
In Page’s case, officials suspected that he was being targeted for Russian government recruitment, though he was never accused by the FBI of wrongdoing.
The US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee last year gave the public an unprecedented peek into the secret process as it released dueling memos about the Page warrant, part of the partisan dispute over then-US special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
Judges can order prosecutors to share FISA information with defendants if they deem it necessary for challenging a search’s legality, but courts consistently have said disclosing the material could expose intelligence secrets.
“The absolute lack of any potential for adversarial testing at any point in the process creates an environment where sloppiness and corner-cutting is so much more likely,” Brennan Center for Justice Liberty and National Security Program codirector Elizabeth Goitein said.
The requests to wiretap Page, originally made in the fall of 2016 and then renewed three times after that, included what the inspector general said were 17 flaws and omissions.
The FBI failed to update the court as it learned new information that could have undercut some of the original assertions that the bureau made about Page, Horowitz said.
Agents, for instance, did not reveal that questions had been raised about the reliability of a source whose reporting had been relied upon in obtaining the warrant, or that a Trump campaign aide had denied to an informant that anyone in the campaign was coordinating with Russia.
Those omissions are problematic, though not necessarily surprising, Goitein said.
“Investigators become wedded to their theories of the case and invested in the success of their investigations,” she said.
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