(CNN) The top federal court that oversees national security surveillance found the FBI routinely failed to observe rules meant to protect the privacy of Americans while searching through emails that were gathered without a warrant, according to a December ruling declassified Friday. Despite identifying "widespread violations" by analysts conducting these searches, a judge still approved the warrantless surveillance program for another year, the ruling also stated. The redacted ruling was posted Friday to a website run by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The work of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is mostly secret because most of the subject matter it deals with is highly classified. The violations identified by the surveillance court concerned improper searches for information on Americans the FBI made of the database composed of intelligence collected through 702 surveillance.

Source: CNN September 06, 2020 21:51 UTC