FBI Director Wray Says Fourth Amendment Would “Water Down” Surveillance of Americans

When FBI Director Christopher Wray came under heated questioning during his testimony Tuesday before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, he let slip a remark likely to haunt him for the rest of the debate over proposed reforms to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
 
Director Wray said, “With everything going on in the world, imagine if a foreign terrorist overseas directs an operative to carry out an attack here on our own backyard, but we’re not able to disrupt it because the FBI’s authorities have been so watered down.”
 
By “watered down” Wray meant reformers’ proposal requiring the FBI to meet the Fourth Amendment’s requirement to obtain a probable cause warrant before accessing the private communications of Americans taken from Section 702. This authority was enacted by Congress to enable surveillance of foreign terrorists and spies located on foreign soil. There is no reason why Section 702 cannot be used to surveil “a foreign terrorist overseas.” The problem is that this authority has become a prime resource for the FBI and other agencies to warrantlessly review the information of Americans. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Ranking Member on the committee, responded: “You would think we’d be going after foreigners, but we are using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to go after Americans.”
 
In addition to skepticism from Sen. Paul and others on the committee, Director Wray’s assertions are contradicted by others with experience in FISA.
 
In a recent editorial, Sharon Bradford Franklin, chair of the independent government watchdog group, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), with two other board members in a recent Washington Times editorial, supported requiring a court order or warrant before the government can review Americans’ Section 702 data.
 
The PCLOB members noted that “the FBI has repeatedly violated querying rules to run searches on Americans. This includes impermissible searches for members of Congress, those who protested the murder of George Floyd, preachers, participants in an FBI community relations program, victims who reported crimes …The FBI has failed to get this right for more than a decade. The bureau’s persistent noncompliance over the years dramatically illustrates the need for independent, impartial, and external review. These compliance errors may also undermine the public’s trust in the FBI, raising real questions about its ability to police itself.”
 
In his written testimony, Director Wray also informed the committee that a warrant requirement would amount to a “de facto ban” on U.S. person queries because warrants are so difficult to obtain from a court. Would a warrant requirement necessarily be a “ban” that would “water down” the FBI’s ability to protect Americans?
 
David Aaron, who held several senior legal positions at the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, wrote in Just Security that “requiring the government to establish probable cause and obtain judicial approval before searching for U.S. person’s communications within previously collected material would bolster that confidence and is a relatively light burden on the government.”
 
A majority in Congress clearly agree. None other than Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) has said he will only support Section 702 reauthorization if there are “significant reforms,” including “first and foremost, addressing the warrantless surveillance of Americans in violation of the Fourth Amendment.”
 
Or, as Chair Franklin and her colleagues wrote: “We do not permit the police to break into a home without such court approval, and we should not permit government personnel to access our communications through U.S. person queries without court review. This is Civics 101.”
 
Sen. Paul told Wray: ”I fear that our federal government is still undertaking many of the same tactics that the Church Committee found to be unworthy of democracy.”
 
Perhaps it is the Fourth Amendment that has been watered down.