Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[seabass]

hey Trader.......just a little story here about the fight to defend our liberties that's so important to you. Looks like one of the tools you have supported just blew up in your face. (note that Bush didn't want anyone to know he f#*ked this up too)


FBI Illegally Used Patriot Act, Audit Says

WASHINGTON, March 9, 2007

(CBS/AP) The FBI improperly and, in some cases, illegally used the USA Patriot Act to secretly obtain personal information about people in the United States, underreporting for three years how often it forced businesses to turn over customer data, a Justice Department audit concluded Friday.

FBI agents sometimes demanded the data without proper authorization, according to a 126-page audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. At other times, the audit found, the FBI improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances.

Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine's report says that number was underreported by 20 percent, according to the officials.

Fine conducted the audit as required by Congress and over the objections of the Bush administration.

The audit blames agent error and shoddy record-keeping for the bulk of the problems and did not find any indication of criminal misconduct.

Still, "we believe the improper or illegal uses we found involve serious misuses of national security letter authorities," the audit concludes.

At issue are the security letters, a power outlined in the Patriot Act that the Bush administration pushed through Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The letters, or administrative subpoenas, are used in suspected terrorism and espionage cases. They allow the FBI to require telephone companies, Internet service providers, banks, credit bureaus and other businesses to produce highly personal records about their customers or subscribers — without a judge's approval.

One government official familiar with the report said shoddy bookkeeping and records management led to the problems. The FBI agents appeared to be overwhelmed by the volume of demands for information over a two-year period, the official said.

"They lost track," said the official who like others interviewed late Thursday spoke on condition of anonymity because the report was not being released until Friday.

"While we’ve already taken some steps to address these shortcomings, I am ordering additional corrective measures to be taken immediately,” FBI Director Robert S. Mueller said in a press release Friday.

The FBI in 2005 reported to Congress that its agents had delivered a total of 9,254 national security letters seeking e-mail, telephone or financial information on 3,501 U.S. citizens and legal residents over the previous two years.

The Justice Department, already facing congressional criticism over its firing of eight U.S. attorneys, began notifying lawmakers of the audit's damning contents late Thursday. FBI spokesmen declined to comment on the findings.

Tasia Scolinos, a spokesperson for the Justice Department, said Gonzales told Mueller "these past mistakes will not be tolerated, and has ordered the FBI and the Department to restore accountability and to put in place safeguards to ensure greater oversight and controls over the use of national security letters."

Sen. Charles Schumer, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee that oversees the FBI, called the reported findings "a profoundly disturbing breach of public trust."

"Somebody has a lot of explaining to do," said Schumer, D-N.Y.

Fine's audit also says the FBI failed to send follow-up subpoenas to telecommunications companies that were told to expect them, the officials said.

Those cases involved so-called exigent letters to alert the companies that subpoenas would be issued shortly to gather more information, the officials said. But in many examples, the subpoenas were never sent, the officials said.

The FBI has since caught up with those omissions, either with national security letters or subpoenas, one official said.

Cindy Cohn, the legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the government, in general, needs to return to information gathering methods used prior to the Patriot Act.

The FBI must "limit these very powerful tools to situations in which the government is actually tracking suspected terrorists or spies," Cohn told CBS News radio.

National security letters have been the subject of legal battles in two federal courts because recipients were barred from telling anyone about them.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued the Bush administration over what the ACLU described as the security letter's gag on free speech.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/09/politics/main2551665.shtml


Exactly what everyone EXCEPT Bush republicans predicted would happen. Tell me one thing you clowns have been right about in the war on terror. Just one thing will do.