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FBI Employees Face Criminal Probe Over Patriot Act
DevanJedi writes "According to an article at Wired.com , several FBI agents are under investigation for illegally acquiring information an American citizens. Overzealous agents used 'misleading emergency letters' obtain phone records of thousands of Americans. This marks the first time government officers have been prosecuted for misuse of the Patriot Act. From the article: 'Unit employees, who are not authorized to request records in investigations, sent form letters to telephone companies to acquire detailed billing information on specific phone numbers by falsely promising that subpoenas were already in the works. According to a third source, FBI officials also said at the meeting that some bureau employees have already been granted immunity from prosecution in the investigation. The third source, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, did not recall, however, that FBI officials described the investigation as "criminal."'"
Immunity is usually granted in exchange for testimony. If they're granting immunity from prosecution to someone who knew about it but did not participate, or small offenders to convict a big offender, I can live with this. They should still be fired, but I'd rather punish the big offenders than every small fish.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Why was Saddam Hussein described as living in a spider-hole and Cheney's bunker is described as an undisclosed, secure location?
Because Saddam Hussein lived in an actual dirty hole in the ground big enough for one person, and Dick Cheney was off hunting at the estates of rich buddies.
Has Cheney ever gone on a publicly-known vacation? No, he's always been at "undisclosed locations" which the American people falsely assumed were secure bunkers in our post-9/11 delusions that the administration was competent. The whole Harry Whittington shooting blew the lid off of that. The whole "undisclosed location" bit is just another manifestation of Cheney's obsession with secrecy.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Believe it or not, when you 'out' a CIA agent, you could be putting in danger the lives of many potential assets as well as any other agents who have in any way interacted with the one you outed. And then the chain continues, if one of those agents is discovered in connection with her, all of their assets and connections are also in danger of death.
There are pretty serious consequences to 'outing' a CIA agent, even if the agent you out is not of some huge importance. What he did was very illegal, immoral and purely an asshole thing to do to get back at someone 'the dickhead' was pissed off at. People might have died because of it.
Imagine if you decided to do something that risked the lives of our heroes purely because you were annoyed at someone politically... I guess it's also typical of this administration.
Liberty.
Unfortunately, it became legal precedent in the early, formative years of the USA (and probably before) to "undo" the proceedings against a criminal for which the evidence against him was acquired illegally. This is due to a lack of logical understanding and separation of duties. Now we have an entire legal culture built around loopholes and exploitation thereof. Consider a scenario in two different ways:
A murder is discovered, and a suspect is charged. The police illegally search the suspect to find a "smoking gun" piece of evidence. There's no question in anyone's mind that this person is the murderer. The person even admits that they did it.
Scenario #1 - "Reality": The weasel/lawyer defending the suspect gets the case thrown out because the police conducted their search illegally. All evidence against the murderer already presented in this case is considered inadmissable because it may have been affected by the illegal search. The killer goes free.
Scenario #2 - "The Right Way": The "tainted evidence" defense is pure crap and doesn't work. Heck, it's not even attempted. The killer gets what's coming to him. BUT... the police still carried out that illegal search. Bring charges against the officers responsible for the illegal search. Dismiss them (fire them) and fine them, then bar them from ever serving as a police officer ever again. In fact, disallow them from being a security guard, private detective, or even a toll booth operator. They should never be in a position of responsibility for the physical safety or authority to grant access to property in the primary responsibilities of their job ever again. This way, you get a system that properly punishes crime, while deterring counter-criminal-crime in the process.
Bottom line: these FBI agents are criminals and should be prosecuted as such.
Congratulations! You just described The Trial , by Franz Kafka. The story was written in Czechoslovakia, just prior to the rise of Fascism in Europe, but I'm sure that the purest coincidence.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
What I want to know is when do we get to spend $70 million in taxpayer dollars and sick a Ken Starr-like special investigator on the current administration? Somehow 70m spent on finding out if our president lied about spooging on an interns dress seems kinda foolish and contrite compared to the antics of this current crop of criminals.(oops I meant politicians) Although, I wish Bill had thought of executive privilege when it came to his admin being forced to testify. Seems to work well for Bush/Cheney & Co.
I don't doubt someone, somewhere out there knows how the PATRIOT Act has been used to combat terrorism. But that misses the point. The real issue here is one of abuse or, at the very least, risk of abuse.
If we could trust that power wouldn't be abused, we wouldn't have to worry about civil rights. We could allow those entrusted with our welfare complete power, safe in the knowledge that their actions weren't being guided by personal gain or bias. We'd know that they carefully considered their actions before taking them. And we'd be safer for it.
The reality is that people are human - even those who are entrusted with the duty to safeguard us all. As such, they are prone to all the bias and temptations people are always confronted with. Our laws, complete with checks and balances, are there to not only safeguard the population but to give pause to those who are entrusted with authority and take action against those who abuse that authority (or prove to be otherwise unworthy).
In short, the issue with the PATRIOT Act isn't whether it's effective against terrorists. It's a matter of whether it has the right checks-and-balance to ensure that it is both effective as well as resistant to abuse. History is proving abuse is widespread. And critics already point out that much of the power involved in the Act already existed... we've just stripped away the checks that are designed to curtail abuse. Odd, that.
Your faith is based on the assumption that the majority of people are intellectually honest enough to change their opinion in the face of new evidence.
I have no idea about majority, but a lot of people are, even if they are reluctant to do so. After Bush started his second term, support for Bush and the War was hovering at around 60%. Now it's more like 25%. So a majority of those who supported the war were able to change their minds about it, with the result that the Republicans lost control of Congress and next year perhaps the Presidency if they don't put forward an anti-war candidate (sorry McCain).
I just wish they had changed their mind before giving Bush another four years to fuck things up. I've been reading Iraq-related news constantly, and while sure the upswing in sectarian violence starting the with mosque bombing in early 2006 was a bad sign, overall the picture doesn't really look any worse to me than it did in 2004 -- a mismanaged clusterfuck quagmire that at best ends in civil war after we leave and the puppet government collapses. But I do suppose that even if you support the war you can only hear "stay the course" so many times before you wonder when this course is actually going to get you somewhere.
But better late than never, right? People change their minds, but most of us are hesitant to admit we were wrong, and BOY were they wrong.
The enemies of Democracy are
While on principle I agree with you, I imagine government officials would be far less likely to talk to the press if they knew their identities would be revealed - especially in an administration such as this, where complete lockstep is required from everyone in the executive branch. The recent testimony) of the former surgeon general is a perfect example of this - he described how Bush is extremely controlling of everything his underlings say. If government officials talked to the press without the safety of anonymity, their jobs would be on the line. This is the only way we'll be able to hear what these people have to say, and while I agree that it is less than ideal, it's probably the best we're going to get.
That's ridiculous, and a lie in itself. Outing an undercover CIA agent endangers the lives of everyone else abroad who ever associated with that CIA agent or other undercover agents working for the same front company and their associates too. People are routinely killed for being "spies".
If Scooter didn't do it himself, he lied knowing he would go to jail for it to protect those who did do it. Probably because they were higher in the administration than he was and would have gone to jail themselves for doing it. Libby was convicted of one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury, and one count of lying to the FBI about how he learned Plame's identity. One count of perjury sent Martha Stewart to jail, got Clinton disbarred and nearly cost him his Presidency, but you are fine with Scooter getting off "scot free" for far more serious stuff.
As far as the Patriot act is concerned, more people die of lightning strikes or bee stings every year than die in terrorist attacks. Traffic accidents kill 40,000 people a year, but you don't see us quivering in fear every time we are about to get behind the wheel.