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The FBI may have conducted as many as 3.4 MILLION searches of Americans' electronic data without a warrant last year

  The Federal Bureau of Investigation may have conducted as many as 3.4 million searches of Americans' elecronic data without a warrant ...

 The Federal Bureau of Investigation may have conducted as many as 3.4 million searches of Americans' elecronic data without a warrant last year. 

The Wall Street Journal  first cited the number Friday, saying it came from an annual report published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. 


The report doesn't allege that the FBI was illegally or improperly searching American data, but still could alarm members of Congress over privacy concerns.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at Friday's press briefing she had not discussed the Journal's report with President Joe Biden.

'My understanding is that some of this was about researching and doing an investigation into potential hacking, but I will get you more from the FBI after this,' she told the press. 

The Federal Bureau of Investigation may have conducted as many as 3.4 million searches of Americans' elecronic data without a warrant last year. The Wall Street Journal first cited the number Friday

The Federal Bureau of Investigation may have conducted as many as 3.4 million searches of Americans' elecronic data without a warrant last year. The Wall Street Journal first cited the number Friday

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at Friday's press briefing she had not discussed the Journal's report with President Joe Biden. 'My understanding is that some of this was about researching and doing an investigation into potential hacking,' she said

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at Friday's press briefing she had not discussed the Journal's report with President Joe Biden. 'My understanding is that some of this was about researching and doing an investigation into potential hacking,' she said 

The 3.4 million amount 'is certainly a large figure,' a senior FBI official said, according to the Journal. 'I am not going to pretend that it isn't.' 

Senior Biden administration officials told the paper that the actual number of searches is likely far lower. 

The officials explained that there are complexities in sorting American versus foreign individuals' data. 

Additionally, if an individual's data is searched multiple times - each would count as a search, driving the total number higher. Thus, the number does not represent the number of individuals that would be impacted. 

More than half the searches, about two million, were related to a probe into the alleged Russian threat to hack into critical infrastructure in the U.S., the Journal said.  


Senior U.S. officials told the paper that those searches were to identify and then protect potential victims of the Russians. 

The searches were permissible due to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was originally passed in 1978. 

Section 702, which is due to expire next year, was added to FISA after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. 

It enabled the National Security Agency to collect intelligence from international phone calls and emails and is supposed to target non-U.S. persons living abroad.

Friday's report marked the first time a U.S. intelligence agency gave a count of how much American data the FBI is looking at through Section 702. 

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