As reported by Wiredone leaked confidential letter from the FBI in which the government agency made a rather unique request to its employees. The same ones, apparently, were pushed to lead surveillance operations without the mandate of American citizens.
The sender of the message appears to be the deputy director of the FBI, Paul Abbotand the same would be sent on April 20th. The date does not seem coincidental, given that the president is on the same day Joe Biden signed a new bill that expands the scope of surveillance. According to the content of the email, Abbate would have asked for “frequent use” of surveillance systems precisely to justify the president’s move.
In fact, part of the content contains these sentences: “To continue to demonstrate why tools like this are important to our mission, we must use them, while also holding ourselves accountable to do so correctly and in accordance with legal requirements“.
What did the Deputy Director of the FBI mean in this email?
As is evident from the initiative which also involved the American president himself, we are not talking about a wild resort to wiretaps e invasive investigations.
According to the new rules, in fact, FBI personnel must obtain the approval of a supervisor or a lawyer of the FBI before being able to take such actions. Abbate’s intention, apparently, is to make intensive use of this opportunity.
The procedures for starting in-depth investigations, in fact, are approved only if they can help “Mitigate or eliminate a threat to life or serious bodily harm” of one or more people.
In recent months the FBI has taken the field several times to combat phenomena related to cybercrime. One of the most sensational cases in this sense is that linked to ransomware BlackCatwith the government agency blocking the cybercriminals’ website and then making the decryptor for the victims.