Biden’s FBI Ramps Up Invasion Of Privacy With This Convenient Excuse
(TargetLiberty.org) – Cybercrime is a huge threat in this technology-saturated age, and Russia has learned to use it effectively. The Kremlin can call on a vast army of hackers to spread disinformation, steal secrets, and attack western politicians. We’re all at risk from Russian cyberattacks. Unfortunately, it seems our own government is exploiting the threat to put us in a different sort of danger.
The threat of cyberattack from Russia fueled more than half of the FBI’s 3.39 million warrantless searches of Americans’ data last year, according to a government report. #TWTFrontPagehttps://t.co/Pl8cBGaEDR
— The Washington Times (@WashTimes) May 3, 2022
On April 29, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released its annual transparency report, which among other details reveals how often US intelligence agencies have searched the data of American citizens. Alarmingly, warrantless data searches showed a huge jump in the first year of the Biden administration. In 2020, the FBI carried out about 1.32 million warrantless searches — but last year’s figure was well over twice as high, at around 3.39 million.
When a senior FBI official was questioned about the scale of the searches, he told reporters it’s “certainly a large figure… I am not going to pretend that it isn’t.” The figures in the report show a single Russian cyberattack was responsible for most of the increase. Last summer, when Russian hackers targeted the Colonial Pipeline and other key US infrastructure, the FBI response included 1.9 million warrantless data searches.
It’s obviously vital for the FBI and other agencies to protect us against foreign hackers. However, it’s also vital they don’t use cybercrime as an excuse to paw through our data without legal safeguards.
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