On Thursday, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance concerning “How a Law Designed to Protect Americans Has Been Weaponized Against Them.”
Horowitz admitted to Rep. Matt Gaetz that the FBI has done 3.4 million warrantless “backdoor searches” of Americans’ communications.
“I want to get into the 3.4 million backdoor searches that the ranking member pointed out in his opening statement. Mr. Inspector General. How should the public think about those?” Gaetz asked.
“Well, I think what we’ve seen in the various public reports, and I’m limited in what I can say about what’s public, which I think is one of the issues, by the way, that’s worth talking about, is transparency here,” said Horowitz.
“It’s obviously very concerning that there’s that volume of searches and particularly concerning the error rate that was reported on in the last two years in the public reporting,” Horowitz continued.
Horowitz revealed an error rate of 30% or over a million erroneous searches.
“I’m a lawyer, not a mathematician, but 3.4 million about 30%, you’re talking about seven figures of error in terms of the searches,” said Gaetz.