An Open Letter to Kash Patel – Clear the Record on Warrantless FBI Surveillance of Americans

​Congratulations FBI Director Kash Patel on your confirmation by the U.S. Senate.
 
In your nomination hearing, you brought a refreshing new tone that was notably lacking in the patronizing and reticent responses of your predecessor. You spoke of the more than 200,000 improper queries of American citizens under FISA Section 702 as “255,000 reasons why the American people don’t trust” the FBI.
 
Your willingness to discuss the FBI’s intrusion into Americans’ privacy prompted Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) to exclaim, “Music to my ears. You are the very first FBI director or FBI director nominee who when asked about this hasn’t said, ‘Oh, don’t worry about it. We’ll handle it okay. We’ve got good people on the inside. We would never breach the trust of the American people.’ Do you know what? They were lying …”
 
Can you please allow your new tone to set a new direction at the FBI?
 
The FBI has routinely used Section 702 as a catch-all for investigating domestic crimes and snooping into the privacy of 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign, the private data of a U.S. Senator and a U.S. House Member, as well as a state judge and a local political party.
 
Now that you are heading for FBI headquarters at 935 Pennsylvania, N.W., we urge you to:
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• Reveal the annual numbers of U.S. person queries (along with the numbers of any actual probable cause warrants) under Section 702 and tell us how many were for domestic crimes not related to spying and terrorism.

 

• Disclose the amount of dollars the FBI spends on purchasing the digital data of Americans, the data brokers this data is purchased from, and the investigative justification for these data purchases by category.

 

• Pledge to restrict the broader definition of “electronic communications service provider” to providers of a segment widely believed to be companies that store data in the cloud.

 

• Continue, with Attorney General Pam Bondi, a commitment made by the former attorney general in a letter to Senate leaders that the expanded “electronic communications service provider” authority will only be used to close a technical gap to fill a critical intelligence need.

 

• Refrain from extending this secret-surveillance-on-demand for any kind of business that offers free Wi-Fi to its customers.

 

• Declassify the nature of this “technical” gap? (Everyone already knows it is about cloud computing – so can Congress please be allowed to openly discuss this?)

 

• Support Sen. Mark Warner’s pledge that the narrowing of this authority must be included in legislation.

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We welcome your fresh perspective and critical outlook at the FBI. Waiting for you in your office will be a few tons of baggage left over from prior directors who played word games with Congress and stretched every tiny gap into a loophole, and every loophole into a canyon.
 
If you can change that tradition, you will be setting up the FBI for great things in the future.

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