"WASHINGTON (CNN) – The FBI is guilty of "serious misuse" of the power to secretly obtain private information under the Patriot Act, a government audit said Friday.
The Justice Department's inspector general looked at the FBI's use of national security letters, in which agents demand personal and business information about individuals – such as financial, phone, and Internet records – without court orders.
The audit found the letters were issued without proper authority, cited incorrect statutes or obtained information they weren't supposed to.
As many as 22 percent of national security letters were not recorded, the audit said.
"We concluded that many of the problems we identified constituted serious misuse of the FBI's national security letter authorities," Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said in the report."
……..
"The FBI has made as many as 56,000 requests a year for information using the letters since the Patriot Act was passed in October 2001, the audit found.
A single letter can contain multiple information requests, and multiple letters may target one individual.
The audit found that in 2004 and 2005, more than half of the targets of the national security letters were U.S. citizens."
……..
"The audit also found problems with "exigent letters," which are supposed to be used only in emergencies when time may not permit the national security letter procedure to be followed.
The audit found exigent letters were not used in emergencies and gave the agency access to telephone records it should not have had."
……..
"Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, said the Patriot Act may have to be changed and the FBI's power curtailed because "they appear not to be able to know how to use it." "
It's gonna take me a while to slog through this whole pdf, but here's some food for thought:
(from page 19 footnote): "The Department was not
required to report the number of NSL requests issued pursuant to the Patriot Act
amendment to the FCRA (consumer full credit reports) or the National Security Act NSL
statute (financial records, other financial information, and consumer reports). The
requirement for public reports on certain NSL usage did not take effect until March 2006,
which is after the period covered by this review."
(Which means, of course, that the total number of NSL's required is even higher than the reported numbers:
"Total Number of NSL Requests. According to FBI data, the FBI
issued approximately 8,500 NSL requests in CY 2000, the year prior to
passage of the Patriot Act. After the Patriot Act, according to FBI data, the
number of NSL requests increased to approximately 39,000 in 2003,
approximately 56,000 in 2004, and approximately 47,000 in 2005."
A separate report on Section 215 requests is in there somewhere, too:
"The Patriot Reauthorization Act also directed the OIG to conduct reviews for the
same two time periods on the use and effectiveness of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, a new
authority under the Patriot Act that authorizes the FBI to obtain business record orders
from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The OIG's first report on the use and
effectiveness of Section 215 orders is contained in a separate report issued in conjunction
with this review of NSLs."
Which should be interesting, to say the least.
Note how relatively small their sample was:
"In this report, we address each of these issues. To examine these
issues, the OIG conducted interviews of over 100 FBI employees, including
personnel at FBI Headquarters and at the Department. OIG teams also
traveled to FBI field offices in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and San
Francisco where we interviewed over 50 FBI employees. In the field offices,
the OIG teams examined a judgmental sample of 77 counterterrorism and
counterintelligence investigative cases files and 293 NSLs issued by those
field offices to deterrnine if the NSLs complied with relevant statutes,
Attorney General Guidelines, and internal FBI policy."
Gotta love that "Investigative Data Warehouse" :
"The FBI also places
NSL-derived information into its Investigative Data Warehouse (IDW), a
database that enables users to access, among other data, biographical
information, photographs, financial data, and physical location information
for thousands of known and suspected terrorists. IDW can be accessed by
nearly 12,000 users, including FBI agents and analysts and members of
Joint Terrorism Task Forces. Information derived from responses to
national security letters that is uploaded into ACS and into Telephone
Applications is periodically uploaded to IDW."
Start with about page 9 of the pdf and read through page 19 to begin with. Interesting stuff. Pete
Why not just fix it after it is re-authorized? I am glad there were the two votes. There is still hope. Wonder why no attack has taken place on American soil since 9/11?
Surely the 'patriot' act (which contains the NSL provisions) can be fixed.
So you just want to through-out the NSL and not try to fix it.
Susan, that's a wonderfully thought-out statement - but how on earth did you arrive at that conclusion? (From the last link I posted) :
"From the moment PATRIOT was passed, we said the NSL power was ripe for abuse and unconstitutional, and it's clearer than ever that Congress should repeal PATRIOT's expansion of NSL powers and reform the PATRIOT Act as a whole."
If you're referring to this statement in the email that gets sent from that link - "Congress must take immediate action to rein in the FBI and use of National Security Letters (NSLs), but it shouldn't stop there." - then (just judging from what we've all seen here of the FBI's wonderful uses of all its' new-found powers) "reining" it and them "in" sounds like the bare minimum of what should be done, yes.
Can you read that okay?
Wonder why no attack has taken place on American soil since 9/11?
Perhaps the Administration hasn't scheduled another one yet?
Surely the 'patriot' act (which contains the NSL provisions) can be fixed.
That would be - exactly - both the point of my posting this and of trying to get people involved with doing just that.
You really and truly do not understand how bad the 'patriot' act is, do you, Susan? Tell you what - you go to this link and read Sen. Feingold's statement: http://feingold.senate.gov/~feingold/state…02/2006215.html (this is the most clear and compelling one - please read it in its' entirety).
Susan - God Bless you - your heart is pure because you think you're doing right by supporting the government's "efforts to fight terrorism".
What you're actually doing is driving nails into the coffin being built for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the spirit and soul of what the word America means from this point on. Pete
My statement was quite self-explanatory. I'd "educate" you further about it, but dealing with closed minds is futile.
I'm sorry you're so afraid of the truth - and so narrow-minded.
Goodbye, Susan. Pete
