In both instances, the aim was to uncover foreign intelligence information, which is consistent with the law. There were other incidents which involved queries for only one person’s information, which the court found less concerning than the “batch” queries. He said the FBI believed that “aggregation” of individual queries could satisfy the standard even if an individual query might not. Rather than addressing Boasberg’s concern that its failure to distinguish between American and foreign searches violated the law, the FBI chose to appeal. In July, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review upheld Boasberg’s decision.

Source: Washington Post October 09, 2019 01:07 UTC