Talk:FBI Section 702 query violations

OR and overreliance on primary sources concerns

I suggest you heed the advice from User:MCE89. Try writing this article without using any primary sources. Stick to secondary sources. Then, only use primary sources occasionally as supporting sources when absolutely necessary for exact quotes, dates, names and such like. If you can't create such an article, then it lacks the necessary notability required for a standalone article. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 03:43, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, but I've added significant secondary sourcing since MCE89's review and am awaiting his input. Bladerunner24 (talk) 05:43, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

Good. Have you also reworded the content so it aligns with the POV of the secondary sources? IOW, is the content now what it would be if you had never seen the primary sources? Those primary sources are often very warped and misleading political spin. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:53, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

Citizenship and FISA searches

You may have mentioned this, but the lead and body should mention very early that much of this problem is because many of the FISA searches "directly", not just "incidentally", targeted U.S. citizens. That's wrong. FISA is aimed at foreigners. It's in the name!

By contrast, if a foreign power's suspected agent communicates with Americans, the communications of U.S. citizens are "incidentally" intercepted even though they are not the targets of the surveillance. That is legitimate.

Here are two examples of "incidental" collection:

The first example of "incidental" collection on U.S. citizens does not concern FISA, and under foreign laws may be legal in their countries. I don't know. Routine surveillance of Russian spies/agents and Russian officials is normal practice for the CIA and its allied intelligence agencies in Europe, Australia, etc. All countries spy on each other. Well, very early in the Trump campaign, seven different European intelligence agencies, plus Australian intelligence, independently, and during their routine surveillance, started "incidentally" getting recordings of Americans connected to Trump. They were in contact with Russian spies and officials. They even got recordings from inside the Kremlin of Russian officials discussing these contacts and discussing just how far they wanted to go with interfering in the coming U.S. elections. The Trump campaign was certainly willing.

All these contacts were secret and covert, and the Trump campaign later lied about it. The nature of the conversations was so abnormal and worrying that our allied intelligence agencies realized they presented a national security threat to the USA and its elections. So, as good allies do, they reported their findings to the FBI and CIA. Because the CIA is not allowed to directly surveil U.S. citizens, they were stymied in their ability to do more, but this was more evidence they were collecting of Trump-Russia collusion/conspiracy that created more and more concern about Trump's loyalties and Russian election interference efforts. The Trump campaign was welcoming the promised help because they expected to benefit from it, and they did. What the FBI lacked was absolute proof that gave them "probably cause" to open an actual investigation. When George Papadopoulos reported the Russian offer of assistance to the Trump campaign (Carter Page received the same offer), and there was proof the campaign, and Trump, knew about this and was not reporting it immediately to the FBI, as required, they got their legal "probable cause" and the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was opened. The rest is history.

The second example does involve FISA rules. It is the Lavrov and Flynn matter. Lavrov's communications were monitored by U.S. intelligence, and Flynn secretly communicated with him, so Flynn's, and the Trump campaign's, complicity in illicit and secret communications with the Russians was exposed. Then they lied about it! That proved their "consciousness of guilt". Trump felt forced to fire Flynn, even though Flynn was just relaying decisions made by the Trump team. Flynn had even phoned the team about what he should say to Lavrov. The team discussed what he should say, reported back to him, and then he did just what they said and got caught.

Flynn became a Russian asset (not the same as an "agent") long before he joined the Trump team. In fact, many of the members of the Trump campaign were/are Russian assets. Some, like Trump, are unwitting assets, otherwise known as "useful idiots". The Trump team was very naive and both ignorant and unconcerned with national security matters. The Russians found it very easy to play them and manipulate them.

The Trump campaign was intensely, and in several other countries (including Israel(?) and the Seychelles) trying to establish a secret back-channel with the Russians that could not be accessed by U.S. intelligence. They even had the audacity and naivety to suggest that this be done using Russia's own highly encrypted and secure systems. That backfired when the Trump team's attempts were discovered. The Russians were astounded and concerned by the Trump team's suggestions, and they apparently refused to go along with that plan, well-knowing that such a back-channel system would be discovered, leading to a huge scandal. The Russians were wise to avoid this, but the Trump campaign's attempts were discovered. All of the above is found in RS.

So, that's how "direct" and "incidental" information gathering works, with very real examples. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:00, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. The article already distinguishes between foreign target collection and U.S. person queries in the Background section.

I'll wait for MCE89's feedback on the secondary sourcing additions before making further changes. Bladerunner24 (talk) 04:38, 12 December 2025 (UTC)

Ordering

Proposal: I think the article would be much stronger if it followed a more rigorously chronological order. At the moment, there is a lot of repetition and back and forth that could be much reduced if we followed chronology more. For example, in the scale and timeline section we show that violations dropped after reforms were made, but readers then have to wait several paragraphs before they get to the nature of the reforms in the "Responses" section. If nobody opposes this, I can have a go. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:29, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

No objection to improving flow, but I would like to restore the "Other FISA violations" section. Secondary sources treat these as related: The Conversation discusses both Section 702 violations and Crossfire Hurricane as "two types of problems" with "FBI FISA authorities." IG Horowitz's congressional testimony explicitly connects them: "in connection with both our Crossfire Hurricane Review and Woods File Audit, we identified inadequate supervisory review as a significant concern." Same agency, same IG, same reforms. Bladerunner24 (talk) 17:59, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

If it’s same agency, same IG, wouldn’t both be covered in the articles on the agency and on the IG and readers of this article can just follow links to read more if they want? BobFromBrockley (talk) 22:05, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

I have an idea, what about folding it under the existing "DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz" subsection? Horowitz is the common thread - he conducted both the Section 702 Woods File audits and the Crossfire Hurricane review, and his testimony explicitly connects them. That keeps the sourced connection intact while integrating it into existing structure rather than a standalone section. Bladerunner24 (talk) 22:09, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

The content needs to be about 702 violations. If it’s not about 702 violations it doesn’t belong in this article. If it is, feel free to try that out. BobFromBrockley (talk) 03:01, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

Yes, staying on-topic is important. Keep the tangential stuff in their own articles. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 03:17, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

Will try integrating under the Horowitz subsection. Bladerunner24 (talk) 03:19, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

Spin off reauthorization section?

@Bobfrombrockley Saw your tag. Happy to spin off some of the heavy detail into a standalone Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act article and trim this section to a summary with a main link. Would you prefer to do this, or should I? Also thank you for your work on the article Bladerunner24 (talk) 03:57, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

Please do! 🙏🏼 BobFromBrockley (talk) 03:58, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

Happy to help. I'll get started on this and hope to finish soon. Bladerunner24 (talk) 04:00, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

Stop. There isn't enough notability for a standalone Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act article. None. Zilch. Nada. And don't use LLM. You'd have to be able to write the article without citing any primary sources, and without using unreliable sources. That can't be done, at least not yet. Search that title, and you'll see what I mean. There are hardly any independent secondary RS that mention it or cover it. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 05:04, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

This was my suggestion due to the length of the (decently sourced) section on it in this article that seems way too long to me. Valjean, looking at that section, do you think (a) the current level of detail is due in this article, (b) that it’s encyclopaedic? If the answer to both is yes then there’s no need for action. If the answer to both is no then we simply need to trim heavily. However, I think the answer to a is no and while the answer to b is yes, which suggests to me the content needs to go elsewhere. BobFromBrockley (talk) 05:25, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

I see its relevance is here. Notability applies to the creation of a new standalone article, not to mention in a place like here. Granularity may be a problem, but good coverage is needed, and it looks like that is pretty good.

In the future, we may see more secondary coverage of the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act itself. Our attempts to document that would logically start here, and as the section grows, the bloating will cause a due weight problem, forcing us to WP:Spin-off most of the content into a new article. That is when we should "go for it". What to do with the nitty gritty details of the section now? I'll let you guys deal with that. The topic just doesn't interest me that much. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 06:12, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

Ok I’m happy with just leaving as is for now. BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:24, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

I don't feel strongly about a spin-off - if you're happy leaving as is, I am too. Should we remove the tag in the meantime? Bladerunner24 (talk) 18:11, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

Dunno. I still think it’s excessively detailed. BobFromBrockley (talk) 21:19, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

I will need to look into this more. Bladerunner24 (talk) 21:22, 14 January 2026 (UTC)