FBI Says Paper Trails Are Optional

WerewolfOfVulcan writes "According to this Washington Post article, the FBI says that it doesn't have to comply with even the unconstitutional provisions of the Patriot Act when asking for phone records. Apparently that whole due process thing doesn't include them. Funny thing is, they've apparently already been doing it for years." Quoting: "Under past procedures, agents sent 'exigent circumstances letters' to phone companies, seeking toll records by asserting there was an emergency. Then they were expected to issue a grand jury subpoena or a 'national security letter,' which legally authorized the collection after the fact. Agents often did not follow up with that paperwork, the inspector general's investigation found. The new instructions tell agents there is no need to follow up with national security letters or subpoenas. The agents are also told that... they may make requests orally, with no paperwork sent to phone companies. Such oral requests have been made over the years in terrorism and kidnapping cases, officials said."

Comments

Bad Summary no cookie

[Gnpatton]

That summary is completetly out of touch with the actual article. If you RTFA there is no mention of the Patriot Act, equally the /.summary doesn't even bother to mention the unconstitutional provisions of the Patriot Act in question.

Thanks for that completely useless and misleading article summary.

I caught a little bit of the hearing today...

[iPaul]

on CSPAN radio. (What a life, eh?) Long story short - one rep said in response to the FBI saying "they'll do their best" to clean up the situation, was "If you don't clean it up, you won't have these NSO/NSL letters to worry about any more." (Taking them away).

The FBI counsel came back to that whole "in an emergency" thing, but they cannot gaurantee that it's an emergency. They couldn't even gaurantee it was part of an investigation (a requirement). What a mess we've created these last six years.

How's Verisign handling those requests?

[Animats]

Much wiretapping in the US is actually outsourced to Verisign. Verisign's NetDiscovery center provides a full-service wiretapping service, with hooks into telcos, cellular networks, VoIP providers, cable TV systems, wireless data networks, and ISPs. Verisign's proprietary back door into the SS7 telephone signaling control network makes this not only possible, but allows Verisign to offer wiretapping services at a lower cost.

Verisign is extending their wiretapping network internationally. Italy is already hooked up.

So if Congress or the press wants to look into this matter, the place to go is Verisign's Network Security Office. Also, attending Intelligence Support Systems for Lawful Interception, Cybercrime Investigations and Intelligence Gathering Conference and Expo in May, in Washington, DC. "Now that most nations of the world require lawful interception support of VoIP and other IP-based services, ISS World Spring 2007 is a must attend event." Talks include "Best Practices for Successful Deployments of Word Spotting Technology" and "Content and P2P Monitoring and Filtering". Major topics for this year include inteconnecting multiple intercept systems to allow easier remote access.

Mod parent up

[carpeweb]

Even if wiretapping is a teensy bit OT from TFA, the Verisign stuff is still very interesting and consistent with the drift of this thread.

Re:The real worrying thing is

[apathy maybe]

>in a free society, telcos have the liberty and *duty* to tell the police to sod off and come back with a proper warrant.

Funny how for poor people, black people, Muslims or whomever (and often times these overlap) this doesn't work. If you tell the cops to sod off, they arrest you for whatever damn thing they please. After all, what is going to happen? They can search you without a warrant, and if you refuse, they arrest you then search you. Most you can do is log the incidents, and then shoot the fuckers concerned come the revolution.

(Personal story, not really related to above except how the cops will arrest you for no good reason and have nothing happen to them. I was at a protest, we were on the footpath. (The cops were conveniently blocking the street for us.) I was arrested and later charged with "fail/refuse to comply with police direction", basically I didn't "move on" when told to. I was later slapped with three other charges (one of which can only apply to the driver of a vehicle!) and offered the chance to plead to one of the minor traffic offences and have the rest dropped. I refused and surprise surprise (after spending hundreds of dollars on plane tickets flying around the country (was arrested not in my home state)) the charges were dropped the day before the court case. Because, at a protest, you don't have to move on. If I tried to sue for wrongful arrest, I would have had to deal with all the crap of getting a lawyer, more flying around and I wouldn't have got any compensation for flights or with the fucking shit I had. Because the cops were "just doing their job".)

Re:The real worrying thing is

[Chris Burke]

I don't get this.. do you not have privacy laws in the U.S.?
I work (through three contractor levels of abstraction) for a telco here in Aus, and there are laws and BIG penalties for giving out customer records to anyone, including the police, who doesn't have the correct authority
What I'm trying to say is, aren't the US telco's here breaking a few laws?

No, because the USAPATRIOT Act gives the FBI the authority to get this information from the telcos.

Now USAPATRIOT only grants that authority under certain circumstances, and given that the FBI takes certain actions such as filing the correct paperwork afterward, but the telco has no way of knowing that the situation is really how the FBI says, nor does it have any idea that the FBI is not producing the correct paperwork for accountability. Basically, they have little choice but to comply.

Normally in the United States if you want to know if an agent of the law has the proper authority to get information or search your premises, you ask to see the warrant.

The whole problem with USAPATRIOT is that it makes warrants unecessary in certain circumstances, and worse it allows the FBI to decide what those circumstances are, and even worse it does not at any point require a judge to verify that the circumstances were such that a warrant could be bypassed. It basically grants law enforcement super-powers, then puts them on the honor system for not abusing those powers.

Making this into a problem of the telcos is tempting, and yeah I would love it if they fought back, but this is at its heart a problem of our government and expecting the telcos to fight the government for us is naive.

Re:Somebody tell me, please:

[Copid]

I think you are being overly pessimistic - it's just sabre rattling they are not stupid enough to do it even for big bribe from extremists in Israel. It just like the fools that want a cold war with China which would turn the USA into an isolated economic basket case within a couple of years.

Well, I would think that's probably true except that they do seem to be stupid enough to let Ahmadinejad and company play them like a fiddle time after time. I remember the good old days when our government was evil and interventionist, but they had a seriously long game plan. Every evil dictator they propped up, every innocent person they had killed, was at least part of a fairly sensible (if ruthless and cynical) long term plan.

These days, our government seems to be doing everything they can to realize the wettest of the wet dreams of our enemies. Want a way to recruit Muslim extremists? Here you go! Want a way to solidify flagging support for your nutty-extremist presidency? Pick a fight with the US and get Bush & Company to saber rattle and rally your base behind you! Want a way to stimulate your softening oil driven economy? Act the ass, get the US to threaten you, and cause oil prices to increase due to uncertainty without cutting back supply and get a shot in the arm! Want somebody to take out the dangerous neighbor who kept you from being a dominant power in your region? Taken care of! The list of things that nobody (until now) was stupid enough to do goes on and on.

This whole administration has been dream after dream come true for Iran because they seem to have no problem taking their eyes off the strategic ball in favor of short-term blunt-instrument ideology-driven fireworks. I used to think that they were too smart to make idiotic decisions like invading Iran, but I've learned to set aside my doubts and just wait and see. Either way it's a win-win situation for Ahmadinejad and the powers that be, all thanks to years of complete mismanagement of our foreign policy and military resources.

Re:%uck that! Jail the agents who try this.

[cheezedawg]

Jail the agents? On what grounds?

The concept here is very simple. The memo defines situations where the FBI will ask the phone company for a voluntary disclosure of information. They are not forcing the phone company to comply through some draconian legal provision- the phone company can easily deny the request if they do not agree with the exigency of the circumstances, and there is nothing that the FBI can do about it.

Accountability has not been removed. According to the article, there will still be an audit trail involved, and in case you missed it, these types of audit trails are doing a pretty good job of keeping law enforcement in check (in spite of the rabid anti-Bush hysterics that qualifies as "mainstream" here on /.).