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FBI headquarters in Washington D.C.KRISTI BLOKHIN/SHUTTERSTOCK

(LifeSiteNews) — The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) improperly accessed a federal foreign intelligence database more than 278,000 times over the past several years, including to collect information on American citizens, according to a ruling by Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) Judge Rudolph Contreras.

The Washington Post reports that the ruling, released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), concerns the federal Section 702 database of communications of foreign nationals surveilled by the federal government, which is supposed to be accessible only for purposes of foreign intelligence gathering.

However, Contreras found that the FBI “frequently violated” the legal standard governing the database while accessing it during investigation of crimes between 2016 and 2020, despite having “no reasonable basis to expect they would return foreign intelligence or evidence of crime.”

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The judge noted that FISC had previously chastised the FBI in 2018, having found that its “‘repeated non-complaint [sic] queries of Section 702 information’ precluded findings that its Section 702 querying and minimization procedures, as implemented, satisfied the definition of ‘minimization procedures’ … and were reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.”

“The Court cited as a contributing factor in FBI’s non-compliance a ‘lack of common understanding within FBI and the National Security Division of the U.S. Department of Justice of what it means for a query to be reasonably likely to return foreign-intelligence information or evidence of crime,’” Contreras wrote. “Nonetheless, compliance problems with the querying of Section 702 information have proven to be persistent and widespread. If they are not substantially mitigated by these recent measures, it may become necessary to consider other responses, such as substantially limiting the number of FBI personnel with access to unminimized Section 702 information.”

The ruling adds further detail to an ongoing picture of a federal law enforcement apparatus that critics say has been weaponized against the political opponents of the current administration and like-minded entrenched federal bureaucrats.

The use of agencies such as the FBI to retaliate against political opponents while treating more ideologically-aligned lawbreakers more softly has been one of the most alarming facets of Joe Biden’s presidency, from prosecuting pro-life activists while neglecting pro-abortion violence and painting parents critical of left-wing classroom indoctrination as dangerous, to disproportionate prosecution of January 6 attendees for nonviolent offenses and retaliation against FBI agents who objected.

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