Can the FBI Be Trusted with the Surveillance of Americans?

Slashdot reader Matt.Battey writes: While everyone was at home, hunkered down watching Tiger King, and avoiding COVID-19, America's Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz released an update to his December, 2019 report. The findings weren't reassuring... Over at Bloomberg, they go so far as to say "The FBI Can't Be Trusted With the Surveillance of Americans."

From the national security blog Lawfare:

Horowitz's team has reviewed 29 FISA applications involving surveillance of U.S. persons. In four of those applications, the inspector general could not review what's called the Woods File—the documentary material that is supposed to support every factual claim in a FISA application—because the files could not be located. In three of these cases, Horowitz reports, it is unclear whether they ever existed in the first place. In the remaining 25 files, the inspector general found discrepancies and errors in all, an average of 20 issues per application—with a range of a small handful to around 65.

The blog calls Horowitz's findings "something of a worst-case scenario... It appears that the facts presented in a lot of FISA applications are not reliably accurate."

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