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Updated May 19, 2023, 03:40pm EDT

The FBI misused a digital foreign surveillance tool nearly 300,000 times on U.S. citizens, including January 6 insurrection suspects and protestors in the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, according to a heavily-redacted court report obtained by multiple outlets Friday, as the FBI comes under increased pressure over its policies.

The report, from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, found a series of abuses of the FBIs querying procedures between 2020 and 2021 that were persistent and widespread, and could require potential changes to the number of FBI personnel with access to a database intended to gather foreign intelligence called Section 702.

According to the report, the FBI failed to present a foreign intelligence purpose to use the database and instead used it to collect information on U.S. citizens, potentially shooting itself in the foot as the Biden Administration hopes to renew the federal act that created Section 702, which is set to lapse at the end of the year.

Among the findings in the report is a list of 133 identifiers of people used in searches in connection with civil unrest and protests during a three-week period in June 2020, the same time as the Black Lives Matter protests against racial injustice following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

The FBI also searched in more than 23,000 queries on people believed to be involved in the January 6 Capitol riot, as well as a batch of queries into more than 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign, according to the report.

The FBI introduced corrective measures to resolve the issue in the summer of 2021, causing the use of the database to drop dramatically, according to a report released in March and obtained by the New York Times.

278,000. Thats how many times the FBI used Section 702 between 2020 and early 2021, according to the report.

The report comes as the FBI wrangles with increased scrutiny from the right, following the release of a report this week from Special Counsel John Durham, which found the FBI should not have launched its investigation into allegations then-candidate Donald Trump had sought information from Russia on his opponent Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election. In January, House Republicans launched a new committeecalled the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Governmentand tasked its members with investigating the FBI and the Department of Justice, which launched probes into former President Donald Trump and his role in the January 6 riot as well as his alleged mishandling of classified White House documents discovered at his Mar-A-Lago resort during an FBI raid. Trump has repeatedly dubbed the investigations a witch hunt, a criticism echoed by his allies in Congress who argue Trump has been unfairly attacked during and after his time in the Oval Office.

Special Counsel John Durham: FBI Should Not Have Launched Trump-Russia Probe (Forbes)

I am a Boston-based reporter. Before joining Forbes, I covered the environment, local government and the arts for a small-town newspaper on Nantucket. My previous work includes NPR, WBUR, WCAI and Nantucket Today. I am a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, with a degree in political science. Email me at bbushard@forbes.com

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FBI Misused Foreign Spy Database To Target Jan. 6 Suspects And BLM Protesters - Forbes