The Hill‘s John Solomon reports then-FBI Director James Comey failed to take immediate action after a whistleblower came forward in 2014 to expose the bureau’s broken warrantless surveillance program.

John Solomon of The Hill reports:

Retired Special Agent Bassem Youssef, the chief of the FBI’s Communications Analysis Unit, said in an exclusive interview with The Hill that no action was taken by Comey in response to the concerns he raised. […]

“I explained to Director Comey that the special program was largely ineffective, very costly and highly burdensome to our agents in the field,” said Youssef, who supervised the program on a daily basis from 2005 through 2014.

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Youssef, a decorated counterterrorism agent and prior FBI whistleblower, told The Hill that he sought in the summer of 2014 to get the FBI to reform the program out of concern it gave the FBI easy access to Americans’ telephone data, leaving it open to potential abuse while generating spurious connections between innocent people and bad actors.

“I believe that the program, as it was, was ripe for potential abuses,” he said. “I think that every law-abiding citizen should feel comfortable and secure in their home in terms of their privacy and that was not the case.” […]

The program was originally started immediately after the 9/11 attacks without specific congressional approval. Under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the FBI was eventually given the power to collect “tangible things,” including books and business records, that were merely relevant to an investigation – a standard far lower than the probable cause warrant generally required in a criminal case. […]

Youssef said Comey initially appeared very interested in pursuing the reforms but then the effort lost all momentum. Youssef said bureau leaders told him they preferred to keep the program untouched, if nothing else to be a “safety blanket” if other terrorism tools failed. […]

In spring 2017, the FBI announced it was ending some of its controversial surveillance practices, including so-called upstream searches of NSA data involving Americans. Those changes came after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court issued a rare public opinion, rebuking the FBI for failing to promptly disclose past abuses of some of its surveillance powers that could have impacted Americans’ privacy protections under the Fourth Amendment.