BREAKING: Obama's FBI Passed Around Classified Information On American Citizens To People Outside Government

Photo by Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

BY:

MAY 26, 2017

Ashocking report from Circa.com revealed on Friday that the FBI under

director James Comey “illegally shared raw intelligence about Americans with

unauthorized third parties and violated other constitutional privacy protections,

according to newly declassified government documents.” That’s a bombshell

charge — Comey told Congress earlier this month that the FBI only used

warrantless data that was “lawfully collected, carefully overseen and checked” —

but the specifics are even more damning.

According to Circa, one ruling from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court

(FISA) “list[ed] hundreds of violations of the FBI’s privacy-protecting minimization

rules that occurred on Comey’s watch.” That included giving intelligence data to

third parties who weren’t cleared to see it, among them “a private entity that did

not have the legal right to see the intelligence.” The FBI claims that the number

of violations is small by percentage of all data operations.

Trump acolytes will undoubtedly suggest that this is precisely what happened

with Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, who was caught up in surveillance of Russian third

parties, unmasked by the Obama administration, and then revealed to the press

by someone in the know. They will suggest that we now know that the FBI was

often exceeding its mandate by searching data without a warrant that they should

not have, and by occasionally allowing that information to flow outside of

established channels.

In reality, the business of national security is sloppy. Mistakes will undoubtedly

be made. The question is twofold: what sort of mistakes were made with

regard to leaking the identity of Flynn to the press? And more generally,

were the systems in place for restricting the free flow of classified information

about American citizens sufficient?

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