The other major scandal of last week was a Justice Department audit of the FBI's use of National Security Letters. The ability to use NSLs was greatly expanded by the Patriot Act. The report says the FBI Misused the Patriot Act.
"A National Security Letter is a form of administrative subpoena used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It is a demand letter issued to a particular entity or organization to turn over various record and data pertaining to individuals. They require no probable cause or judicial oversight. They also contain a gag order, preventing the recipient of the letter from disclosing that the letter was ever issued. Compliance is mandatory."
Got that. Pretty powerful stuff with great potential for misuse. The FBI says from 2003-2005 they issued 143,074 NSLs but the report found in their sample they under-reported to Congress by about 20%. For comparison in 2000 there were 8,500 NSLs issued. They also found a lot of mistakes in the data reported. In 2003 39% of the NSL Requests were for US citizens, in 2005 it was 53%. NSLs were used in 15% of the counter-terrorism cases opened in 2003. It was 29% in 2005. The FBI amazingly didn't keep data about how the info gathered from NSLs was used in criminal trials. But in the cases that the report found "the most common charges were fraud (19), immigration (17), and money laundering (17). That will teach al Qaeda.
The FBI is supposed to be self-policing on the use of NSLs. From 2003-2005 they reported a total of 26 possible violations. 22 of those were for FBI errors like writing down the phone number. In the audit's analysis of 77 cases which included 293 NLSs, they found 22 more possible violations. That's a big percentage. Well it's 7.5%. 7.5% of 143,000 is 10,750. Thats a lot of violations. And if you realize that the FBI only reported 26, they possibly reported only 0.25% of the violations. That's investigative ability.
There are lots of other issues found in the report. E.g., 60% of the investigated files contained at least one violation of FBI policies involving NSLs. "Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, conceded that the bureau had improperly used the USA Patriot Act to obtain information about people and businesses."
Glenn Greenwald writes that the problem is Blind faith in the Bush administration. When the Patriot Act was being reauthorized there were concerns of this power by some Senators and the Washington Post. The Department of Justice said the concerns were false, that safeguards were in place. Well no they weren't, the DoJ was wrong, though I'm not sure if they were lying or incompetent. We also know that Arlen Spector (R-PA), was Judiciary Committee Chairman from 2002-2006 was the one pushing for the Patriot Act reauthorization and saying there were no problems with NSLs. And now he's complaining loudly about the FBI. Sorry Arlen, you're to blame too.
Geoffrey Stone, University of Chicago Law Professor, writes "One reason the Bush administration has fared so poorly over the past several years is its obsessive fear of public accountability and separation of powers."
"As the Framers of the Constitution well understood, however, such an approach to governance is a recipe for disaster. The Framers believed in both openness and checks-and-balances"
"What this blunder of executive branch arrogance proves once again is clear – “trust us” is not a viable principle of a well-functioning democracy."
No comments:
Post a Comment