US intel agencies sharply cut surveillance during pandemic
Source: AP
WASHINGTON (AP) The number of targets of secretive surveillance in national security investigations fell sharply last year in part because of the coronavirus pandemic and continued scrutiny of the FBI's wiretapping authorities arising from the Russia investigation, according to a government report released Friday.
The drop in eavesdropping targets under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which empowers the FBI to monitor the communications inside the United States of people suspected of being agents of a foreign power, followed a decline the year before after several years of substantially larger numbers.
U.S. officials say the statistics are known to fluctuate from year to year because of various factors, but that in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic "likely influenced target behavior, which in turn may have impacted some of the numbers reported for that year.
The pandemic was the single event with the biggest impact to human behavior worldwide since the Second World War," said Ben Huebner, the civil liberties chief at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the nation's spy agencies. "That means it also had an impact on our appropriate foreign intelligence targets.
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