The December court ruling released on Friday centered on the warrantless wiretapping program, which since 2008 has been governed by a law known as Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. In 2018, when Congress reauthorized Section 702, it added a requirement that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approve rules every year limiting how analysts may query the data. In the newly disclosed ruling, James E. Boasberg, the chief judge of the FISA Court, signed off on the new annual set of rules, but not before scolding the F.B.I. over many instances in which its analysts had violated a previous set of them, including requirements that searches of the repository have a foreign intelligence or criminal purpose. “It must be noted, however, that there still appear to be widespread violations of the querying standard by the F.B.I.,” he wrote.

Source: New York Times September 05, 2020 21:56 UTC