In an overt public relations effort, the FBI released information to Politico about three terrorist attacks on US soil the Bureau says it eliminated thanks to information gleaned from a controversial section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act the House is considering restricting. One of the attacks was said to be “potentially imminent” prior to FBI action.
The House wants to require the FBI to get a warrant to obtain a warrant before it searches the electronic communications–including recordings, text messages and emails–of any foreign national for information on US citizens. While a bipartisan group in Congress wants to change this part of the law, known as Section 702, the FBI says that being able to find information from foreign sources about Americans who may be working with terrorist groups should not be hampered by getting a warrant or court order for a foreigner’s records.
According to the information shown to Politico, FBI investigators identified a US resident by monitoring the communications of an overseas terrorist group. The individual who made contact with the group was arrested within a month, after he collected the needed material to make an unspecified weapon and he created a “short list” of potential targets in the US.