Slashdot Mirror
Audit Finds FBI Abused Patriot Act
happyslayer writes to mention that according to Yahoo! News a recent audit shows that the FBI has improperly and in some cases illegally utilized the Patriot Act to obtain information. "The audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine found that FBI agents sometimes demanded personal data on individuals without proper authorization. The 126-page audit also found the FBI improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances. 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."
According to GW Bush, "They hate our freedoms." I guess he figures if we get rid of our freedoms, they'll quit hating us. Nothing else makes much sense.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
So all the people who regularly point out how much "better" a society Sweden is than the US, either have to: - entirely backtrack - agree that domestic surveillance really ISN'T that big a deal - just be hypocrites. (grabs some popcorn) OK, let's start discussing!
Ain't that the truth. I was surprised to learn earlier this week that Rumsfield and Cheney were both in the Nixon Whitehouse.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
Not all abuse is the same, and we should be clear here as to what the FBI actually did and didn't do. A good analogy here is that an FBI agent using their service firearm to unjustly shoot and kill a civilian is different from FBI agents failing to keep track of which agents have which guns and make sure they return them when they leave the agency. One case you expect criminal prosecution and the other case you'd expect some administrative action.
Same here. No one is alleging that the FBI used these Patriot Act powers outside of their intended purpose. What the FBI didn't do, that they should have, was properly account for the letters they did use, specifically, properly count the number used, and properly follow up with the recipients of the letters.
So yes, if FBI agents were using this power to get information that the law was not designed for them to get, then I'd expect criminal prosecution. But, as it appears is the case, the FBI just didn't properly ACCOUNT for the letters they did use, an administrative penalty seems perfectly sufficient to address the problem.
That all, of course, is separate from the issue of whether this law should exist at all (it shouldn't).
paintball
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
There is a way to smack them other than criminal charges. Unless it was repealed during the post 9/11 orgy of civil rights abuses, Section 1984 of Chapter 15 of the US Code states that a government official is personally financially responsible for double damages if they violate the civil rights of a citizen. This probably came out of the 60s Civil Rights movement to prevent southern officals from keeping blacks out of the voting booths -- a necessary thing at the time. Now it can be used to protect people against abuses of the Patriot Act -- but only if they know they've been victimised.
And you want to tell me how over 140,000+ people were suspected of terrorism or affiliated to it, in the USA?
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Sibel Edmonds, while employed at the FBI as a translator, determined that the FBI employed spies for various Turkish organized crime groups as translators who concealed important evidence in FBI investigations.
She further discovered that "senior elected US officials" were implicated by these documents in direct involvement with organized crime groups in the Middle East and Turkey involved in drugs, arms smuggling, and the nuclear materials black market. These same people were involved with the outing of CIA covert agent Valerie Plame Wilson, apparently for the purpose of protecting these same organized crime groups which Plame's covert operation was investigating. (Marc Rich, the alleged "money man" for some of these organizations, was a client of "Scooter" Libby at one time.)
For these discoveries, she was fired and gagged by a direct order from the DoJ from ever discussing these matters with anyone not in the US Senate with a security clearance. So far, no one in the US Senate has had the balls to come forward and request the details.
When I was arrested by the FBI, I was presented with a document they requested me to sign before interrogation. The document expressly stated that I would waive all rights to an attorney before questioning. I pointed this out to the agent. He said, "No, it doesn't mean that." I pointed out that I could read and understand English perfectly well, and there was no caveat whatsoever anywhere on that paper that said anything other than that I waived all rights to an attorney.
I refused to sign. They stomped off. My Miranda rights were secured.
Anybody who thinks the FBI adheres to ANY form of "rule of law" is living in a dream world.
Such people need to look at the Federal court decisions that ruled that the FBI engaged in YEARS of illegal "black bag" jobs and other illegal operations against the American Indian Movement.
Such people need to look back at the 1960's when the FBI printed up posters of Abbie Hoffman and other activists of Jewish background accusing them of being Jews who were racist against blacks and had these posters plastered all over black neighborhoods in Harlem and elsewhere.
Such people need to look at the case of the Federal prison inmate who was beaten to death in the Oklahoma City transit center by two Bureau of Prisons correctional officers. The Oklahoma coroner had to get a court order to be allowed in to investigate the case. The FBI was called. One of the agents took the bloodstained garments of the prisoner, threw them in the trunk of his car and drove around with them, destroying their value as evidence, until he eventually complained to his supervisor that they were stinking up his car.
The FBI are the scum of the earth. The only lower scum are Bureau of Prisons correctional personnel. In fact, this is being detrimental to the reputation of earth scum to put these people on the same level.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!