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Warrantless Search By FBI Ruled Unconstitutional By Federal Judge

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A case that started a decade ago with a New York City man’s arrest at John F. Kennedy Airport for allegedly trying to join a Pakistani terrorist group has now dealt a setback to government spying powers. In a decision that could feed into a looming fight over government surveillance, a federal court ruled last month that FBI agents violated the man’s constitutional rights when they searched National Security Agency databases for information on him dozens of times without a warrant, the Intercept reports. The decision gives a boost to the surveillance critics who have long asked Congress to impose a warrant requirement on “backdoor” searches of NSA data collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA. Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the FBI, Kash Patel, has called for “major reform” of Section 702. He faces a Thursday confirmation hearing where surveillance hawks on the Senate Intelligence Committee could grill him about that position. Trump’s other nominees, however, have lined up to back the law. The parties to the New York City case have not signaled whether they intend to appeal the ruling in the case against Agron Hasbajrami, who remains imprisoned. But if it stands, the decision could play a role in the congressional debate over the spying law when it expires in April 2026.


“This is a major constitutional ruling on one of the most abused provisions of FISA,” Patrick Toomey, the deputy director of American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, said in a statement. “As the court recognized, the FBI’s rampant digital searches of Americans are an immense invasion of privacy, and trigger the bedrock protections of the Fourth Amendment. Section 702 is long overdue for reform by Congress, and this opinion shows why.” Prosecutors admitted that the FBI agents on Hasbajrami’s case had trawled NSA databases to turn up key information on him, without applying for a warrant. Hasbajrami’s appeal of his guilty plea offered a rare opportunity to mount a legal challenge to a spy regime that is often so shrouded in secrecy that it cannot be challenged in court, per Supreme Court precedent. U.S. District Court Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall ruled only last month on the constitutionality of the FBI’s searches. Her decision was released Tuesday in heavily redacted form.

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