Slashdot Mirror
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."
I'd make a funny about "In Soviet Amerika", but it just ain't funny anymore.
We need to step on these bastards necks NOW.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
... bitch at your phone companies.
This isn't wire taps, this is getting your phone records. This is social engineering.
You could do this too, you don't have to be a federal agent.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Short answer to your last question: No.
"I, a concerned citizen of this country, was left feeling unsatisfied and betrayed by the very government I am forced to pay to support."
Welcome to - the nature of the state. You have just learned what every OTHER citizen of every OTHER country in the entire history of the world has learned at some point.
"I'm growing tired of hearing about how the democratic process will repair these evils. How? When?"
Never. No democracy ever has and no democracy ever will. Because democracies that reach this point are no longer democracies - if they ever were.
When you reach this point, revolution or destruction by outside attack are the only solutions left.
It's a tossup which one - or both - will occur to the US and when, but it is inevitable.
And you haven't seen anything yet. Wait until the war on Iran starts, and car bombs start going off all over the place here as the US economy sinks into the sunset due to quadruple oil prices and the Chinese dumping the US dollar. The Constitution is history. Fergeddaboutit.
The only thing you need to understand is: the people really running this country WANT THIS TO HAPPEN. To paraphrase the "feel good" movement, everything that happens happens for a reason - and it serves them (not us.)
But if you're smart enough (which I apparently am not), you can make it serve you, too...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Don't worry, there doesn't need to be any safeguards because we promise to use our powers wisely and justly, and besides, don't you hate Terrorists?!
The FBI seems to love terrorists, because they have bought about a regime in which anyone merely claiming to be an FBI agent can ask for and receive any confidential or private information on any US citizen. The terrorists will surely be posing as agents NOW, and because there is no validation of authority, paper trail or any safeguards at all, they will be able to find out everything they want to know.
Robert Mueller and the rest of his complicit conspirators need to be in jail.
Of course, the memo authorizing this travesty, which utterly destroys the last vestiges of due process for ordinary Americans, says that agents are to use the "exigent circumstances" requests only in case of "dire need". Yeah, we know how well that crap worked when they were supposedly abiding by the extremely dubious constitutional grounds provided by the infamous PATRIOT ACT. Our legislators continue to drag their feet and express surprise that the FBI would abuse its power: these are the jerks that handed the Feds the gun in the first place, now they seem surprised to find that the Bush administration has made use of its secret police powers to investigate at least 143,000 Americans, few of whom are at all likely to be terrorists - I guess that happens when most of one's eighteen functioning brain cells are mainly concentrating on how to maintain oneself in position at the public trough.
This is a clever move on the part of the Foul Breathed Investigators as it seems that "exigent circumstance" requests may be made by phone; in the interests of saving time and lives of course. Now, with no need to issue even minimal follow-up paperwork there will be far fewer traces of the abuses of power that will continue. After all, the cockroaches can now safely occupy the middle of the room: the lights have been turned off. No need to worry about having to scurry for cover should any noxious Inspector General or Congresscritter show up asking "What the hell?" So, America takes yet another step towards the darkness that is a police state. How long before phone records are used to justify having the military pick up some local "unlawful enemy combatant" in your neighborhood? Think it can't happen here? Think that Americans somehow don't have that "dark side" that shows up everywhere else in the world when governments are allowed virtually unlimited police powers? If that's true, how do you account for the FBI PATRIOT ACT abuses, the current dustup over the firing of eight US District Attorneys, the Valerie Plame affair, the use of secret CIA prison camps and the "extraordinary rendition" of prisoners to other nations with even fewer safeguards against torture than we have, the fact that the military tribunals now being held at Gitmo are secret (can't have anyone finding out who we really detain down there), and the remainder of the whole sordid list of abuses that our little sawed-off tinpot "Decider" in the White House has loosed on this country?
It's getting to be very close to the point at which openly dissenting from government policies will become very dangerous. It will be too late to put a stop to these abuses once the malevolent piece of vegetation that we "elected" President decides to start really using all the powers he's been given over the past six years. After all, how many people are going to be willing to openly risk the "midnight knock" that is more and more a possibilty for anyone who stands out from the crowd? Once people begin to disappear in numbers large enough to attract the attention of the sleep-walking American populace there will be little chance of peacefully reigning in our out-of-control Federal government. The time to act is now. Join the next demonstration against the war, start one to call attention to how Texas' Favorite Idiot has trampled our Constitutional liberties into the mud, write the spineless wimp that occupies your local Congressional district office and insist that he begin living up to his oath of office - which requires the protection of the Constitution and I'm not talking about shielding the document itself from destruction, write your local newspapers explaining why continuing to allow President Bush, Vice President Richard "Sparky Crashcart" Cheney, Attorney General Alberto "Torquemeda" Gonzales, and Secretary of State Condi "Head in the Sand" Rice to remain in office is a Bad Idea, do something to protect this country before it's too late. The government IS NOT THE COUNTRY and the sooner everyone realizes this the sooner we can kick the SOBs out of o
Impeach Barack Obama for violating the Constitutional requirement to be a "natural born" citizen to hold the office of P
No, Clinton did not do the same thing. Clinton and Bush both fired all the US attorneys at the beginning of their terms. That is very typical for Presidents, it's much like picking a new Cabinet.
This separate firing of eight attorneys, however, is very different. Firing some US attorneys in the middle of a Presidential term for more-or-less undocumented reasons and then replacing them without Congressional approval (as per the provisions of the PATRIOT Act) is unprecedented and worrisome. Although they are appointed by the President and serve "at his pleasure", they are not supposed to be his employees, there's a huge difference.
Unfortunately, the bootup process is powered by blood.
Last post!