China News Service, May 1 (Xinhua) Comprehensive report. On April 29, local time, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) released its annual report showing that in the past year, the FBI has made no search warrants. , conducted as many as 3.4 million searches of the electronic data of the American public.

FILE PHOTO: The FBI headquarters in Washington.

　　The searches reportedly involved emails, text messages and other electronic communications.

According to the report, between December 2020 and November 2021, FBI personnel conducted 3.4 million searches of electronic data on the American public, nearly three times higher than the previous year’s less than 1.3 million searches.

Electronic data legally collected by these FBI agents under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and looking for signs of threats and terrorists.

　　When foreign spies talk to people in the United States, or when two foreign targets talk about an American, data on the American is looked at, the report said.

However, since repeated searches for the same keyword are considered a single search, the report did not mention the number of people who were searched.

　　Bloomberg's report pointed out that the report did not say the activity was illegal or wrong, but because the incident involved sensitive personal data, it may spark a debate in the US Congress and the public over the right of intelligence agencies to collect and review intelligence information.

　　Intelligence reports routinely mask the identities of individuals, referring to them as "Individual 1," etc., according to reports.

But officials can ask for the real names of specific people when necessary to understand the significance of the information obtained.

　　In 2021, the DNI reported about 10,700 requests to disclose the personal identity of specific Americans, compared with about 9,800 in 2019 and 6,000 in 2020.

Bloomberg also noted that revealing names is not the same as making those names public or revealing them to the media, which can be a criminal act.

　　Ashley Gorsky, a senior attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union's National Security Program, described the raids as a "massive" invasion of privacy, "and the report reveals the extent of these unconstitutional 'backdoor raids', and underscored the urgency of the issue."

　　Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, warned that the FBI and other agencies must be more forthcoming with accurate information if they want to retain their authority.

"Transparency on the bottom line is critical if the federal government wants to have such broad surveillance powers."