Not the NSA program but the Washington Post reported yesterday that the FBI Finds It Frequently Overstepped in Collecting Data using NSLs. "An internal FBI audit has found that the bureau potentially violated the law or agency rules more than 1,000 times while collecting data about domestic phone calls, e-mails and financial transactions in recent years, far more than was documented in a Justice Department report in March that ignited bipartisan congressional criticism."
"FBI officials said the results confirmed what agency supervisors and outside critics feared, namely that many agents did not understand or follow the required legal procedures and paperwork requirements when collecting personal information with one of the most sensitive and powerful intelligence-gathering tools of the post-Sept. 11 era -- the National Security Letter, or NSL."
"Since March," FBI General Counsel Valerie E. Caproni added, "remedies addressing every aspect of the problem have been implemented or are well on the way."
So the NSA and FBI are avoiding warrants; guess what, other agencies are as well. Here's a crazy story of the DEA causing a car accident, car theft and car chase in order to make use of the vehicle exception to the 4th Amendment.
"On December 18, 2004, Ascension Alverez-Tejeda and his girlfriend were stopped at a traffic light near La Pine Oregon, and when the light turned green, the car in front of them stalled. Alverez-Tejeda stopped in time but a pickup truck behind him rear-ended him. When he got out to look at his bumper, the police showed up and arrested the truck driver for drinking and driving. The cops then convinced Alverez-Tejeda and his girlfriend to go to a nearby parking lot, ordered them out of their car and into in the back of the cop car for 'processing.' While they were in the cruiser, a person jumped in their car and took off. The cops ordered the pair out and set off in full pursuit up the road. A few minutes later, the stolen car comes flying back down the road with the police cruiser in pursuit. The pursuing officer returns alone with the woman's purse, telling the duo that the carjacker thrown it out the car window and escaped. The woman is so upset she hurls and the police put the distraught couple up in a motel."
Everyone in the story other than Alverez and his girlfriend were cops. This is what cops are doing instead of getting warrants. Why is that? The district court in Washington found that the caper violated the Fourth Amendment, but the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the lower court's decision on June 7th.
2 comments:
I think I remember reading that the 1000 violations were found in a 10% sample of all the recordings....
Maybe from the 2nd paragraph of the article :)
"The new audit covers just 10 percent of the bureau's national security investigations since 2002, and so the mistakes in the FBI's domestic surveillance efforts probably number several thousand, bureau officials said in interviews. The earlier report found 22 violations in a much smaller sampling."
and the last two:
The officials said the final tally of violations that are serious enough to be reported to the panel might be much less than the number turned up by the audit, noting that only five of the 22 potential violations identified by the Justice Department's inspector general this spring were ultimately deemed to be reportable.
"We expect that percentage will hold or be similar when we get through the hundreds of potential violations identified here," said a senior FBI official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the bureau's findings have not yet been made public.
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