US Government Reports Decrease in FBI Surveillance of American Citizens in 2022.

The number of times the FBI searched for information on Americans within the Section 702 database fell over 95% in 2022 from 2021, according to a transparency report on US spying. The decline follows a series of reforms the FBI instituted in the summer of 2021 to curtail searches of the database for information on Americans who correspond with surveilled foreigners. The report is the first to disclose the impact of the fixes the intelligence community implemented in 2021 after a secret intelligence court overseeing the program determined that the bureau committed "apparent widespread violations of the querying standard." However, lawmakers are still calling for new safeguards for the federal law enforcement agency before renewing the controversial electronic surveillance statute.