Oh boy, here we go. The FBI is at it again. This time, they were investigating whether some sneaky foreign government had their eye on a Republican lawmaker. Sounds like a spy movie, right? Well, it gets even better. The FBI used a warrantless surveillance law to conduct searches for information about this lawmaker, but they totally botched it up. Classic FBI move, am I right?

If you thought the initial story was wild, wait until you hear this. The FBI messed up so bad that they accidentally looked through messages that had nothing to do with the lawmaker they were supposed to be investigating. I mean, come on, guys. How hard is it to check whether you’re reading messages from the right person? It’s like they were trying to catch a fish but ended up with a boot.

Now, here’s where things get interesting. Congress is currently trying to decide whether to reauthorize this warrantless surveillance law (called Section 702), and this whole debacle certainly isn’t doing it any favors. If the FBI can’t even get their act together when using this law, why should they be allowed to keep using it?

The FBI’s excuse for all of this is that one of their intelligence analysts used the name of a member of Congress as a search term, but forgot to include any limiting terms. It’s like when you Google something and then get distracted and end up down a rabbit hole of totally irrelevant information. We’ve all been there, right? Except this is the FBI we’re talking about.

Finally, Representative Darin LaHood of Illinois stepped up and confirmed that he was, in fact, the lawmaker that the FBI was investigating. It’s like a game of Clue – “I hereby accuse the FBI, in the surveillance room, with the botched search!” It’s almost too ridiculous to be true.

All in all, this whole situation is just one big mess. The FBI couldn’t find the right messages, Congress is up in arms about the surveillance law, and poor Representative LaHood got caught in the crossfire. Maybe it’s time we got a group of preschoolers to run things – they can’t do any worse than this.

Serious News: nytimes