NEW: The FBI is hiring a private contractor to help overhaul its policies surrounding a controversial tool used for spying on Americans that has drawn the ire of President Donald Trump. by @LoopEmma for @Politicsinsider ($) ow.ly/qcUm50C6Dy9
It's a move that is prompting concerns about the seriousness of the reforms and the federal government's ability to protect sensitive information. It also raises questions about whether the FBI has had the internal resources needed to vet its work in the past.
Outside firms had until this week to bid on a contract to help revamp the process by which investigators seek permission to use the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to spy on those believed to be working for foreign powers.
In the Sept. 23 contract solicitation, the FBI said it "relies extensively" on the 1978 law to collect information as part of investigations into terrorists and other countries' spying operations in the US.
Ultimately, the contractor that gets the FISA job will be tasked with providing a team of eight people who will need to have or acquire security clearances, some top secret and others even higher.
The team will design a "robust and exacting audit process" to prevent the FBI from making mistakes in its classified requests to the secretive federal court in Washington, DC, that decides on FISA applications, the solicitation said.
3 weeks before the bureau asked for bids, FBI Director Christopher Wray & AG Bill Barr announced the latest in a series of big changes to FISA practices as a result of problems in past applications, namely those tied to the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 WH campaign.
In December, Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz reported that all four of the government's applications in 2016 and 2017 to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page contained "significant errors."
The president and his supporters have seized on the inspector general's findings to falsely claim that the FBI's investigation into possible collusion between members of the Trump campaign and Russia was illegitimate.
Horowitz, however, concluded that the FBI had sufficient reason to open the investigation in July 2016, months before the first request to spy on Page and well before special counsel Robert Mueller took over a probe that dominated the first 3 years of the Trump administration.
"Like many of America's biggest corporations routinely do, the FBI is seeking objective expert advice to improve its internal processes and procedures," the bureau said in a statement to Insider on Tuesday.
A Democratic congressional source told Insider the bureau's problems policing itself stem from an attitude of 'We're the FBI. Trust us.'
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