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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."'"
Do the little guys get pardons too? It sure would be embittering to see Scooter Libby go free when salt of the earth NWO grunts got sent to prison.
technical writing / development
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?
This is my main argument against the whole "we know what we're doing with this power" argument being put forward.
We, as citizens, have no idea why these records were sought, and what was done with them. Were they altered? Were the requests ultimately put to use that saved lives or harmed them? How many made it through without being caught? How will we ever know for sure?
The example for restricting power I like to put forward for arguments sake:
Lets say you're, say, 35 years old, recently divorced, ready to move on and find yourself a new girl. Looking around, you meet someone in a bar, she's recently divorced too. Things are going well for the two of you, when all of a sudden, some charges are brought up on you.
Turns out, her former husband is employed at [pick your favorite cloak and dagger agency], and not happy about his wife dating again.
Are these charges real? are they made up?
Of course, I'm not proposing that this searching power will only be used for such purposes, or that fraudulent data could be put in, but where is the recourse for when some unhinged person attempts to abuse their position?
Similarly, lets say you're in a car accident with the son/daughter of a similarly employed person. They have unknown, potentially damaging power to affect your life and cause you serious trouble in an effort to change the outcome of the situation/extract revenge.
This kind of unchecked power *will* be abused. BOFHs aren't just in server rooms, they're in every employment position imaginable, and there is a nonzero percentage of them who will abuse their position for any reason. I've only given two, I'm certain you can think of many, many more!
The third source, who also spoke on condition of anonymity,
Sure would be nice if the US Press Core grew a pair. Everywhere else in the world, officials put their name to their comments because the press won't print comments without any name; there's no accountability, so people have no incentive to tell the truth, so there's no point in printing the comments. I'm so fed up with US politicians and officials covering their asses with "anonymous" comments, and the press core lapping it up.
For chrissakes, some of these people are even telling the press exactly how to "anonymously" describe them: Cheney, for example, always demands to be quoted as "a senior Bush administration official."
Please help metamoderate.
Wow, if only there was some way we could have predicted this?
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
Please Please Please, let one of the FBI agents be working on request of the whitehouse staff.
I'd hate to see it be just average schmoes just stalking their ex-girl/boy friends.
Also, subpoenas first you lame ass telcos, checks and balances....
They are literally endangering the lives of all of us. By abusing the PATRIOT Act, they are risking having it taken away from those agents who would use it legally to prevent some sort of terrorist attack from happening again.
I hope it, the PATRIOT Act, is gotten rid of. It's not needed. And I was against it to begin with as well as against renewing it. They already had all the power needed to reduce the risk of terrorist attackes. Yes, I said "reduce the risk", as the risk can't be eliminated even in a police state run by a military dictator.
FalconShould there be a Law?
One of the tags for this article is "slashdotliberalwhining".
Just seeing that broke my heart, makes me want to cry. What have we come to when holding our officials responsible for their actions accounts to "liberal whining"?
I know we'll never hold Bush accountable, nor Cheney nor any of the real players in this situation. But still, America is supposed to be free, and part of that is punishing police, soldiers, fbi agents, or even presidents when they break the law. The idea that somehow they are above the law, the very *idea* that they are above the law kind of obviates the whole fucking spirit of freedom and why America was founded.
Let me say this exactly once: These FBI agents are *citizens*, and so are soliders, and so are Bush and Cheney. They are not above the law.
I'm not saying this as a liberal ( though I am one ) nor as a libertarian ( though I also sort of am one ) but as a human being, and as an american. A deeply frightened and ashamed-for-my-countrymen american.
lorem ipsum, dolor sit amet
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.
The bulk of those who are still solid bushies are living in a persistent fantasy world. They think the war in Iraq will be "won"...whatever the hell that means, since we still don't seem to have a defined goal other than it going away. They think we went there in the first place for the "right reasons." They think the reason the terrists haven't blown up the Sears tower is because we're "fighting them over there" and not just because terrorists as a whole tend not to be all that successful.
I don't think anything would convince them they're wrong. I mean literally anything; if he was caught on tape having sex with an underage boy, they'd say it was a liberal framejob. There is practically nothing they won't believe is someone else's fault. They're emotionally wedded to their position. If things were reversed, we'd see a similar number of liberal weenies blaming it all on the conservatives.
It's sad to say, but there just aren't a lot of free-thinkers in the world. It just shows up more here because things have gotten so polarized.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
"If this is true, I honestly don't know what to say anymore.
I'm moving to Antarctica."
This isn't anything new.
The last time we had anything like this going on was during and after the Nixon administration. In those days it was an FBI program called COINTELPRO- which infiltrated (CIA style) and collected evidence against a semi-terrorist organization called the "Weather Underground". In fact their evidence was so tainted by rights violations, that with the exception of David Gilbert, who got a life rap for murder, they all walked.
Gilbert of course was involved in an armored car robbery in New York, and charged in New York, so even he walked in regard to the COINTELPRO charges.
The others, who used to blow things up (though they warned people about the bombs so that no one would get hurt), were summarily released one after another once the federal courts got hold of the evidence of FBI wrong doing.
In fact, the evidence that freed them, was in fact STOLEN by them out of an FBI office in Mississippi (If memory serves).
This is nothing new. And under this administration not suprising. And the courts did the right thing... evidence that is "fruit of the poisoned vine" should never be allowed.
Let's hope this latest flap is far less agregious.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
That 26% would support the devil himself if he was (or pretended to be):
1. Christian (ironic isn't it?)
2. Republican
"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross." - Sinclair Lewis, 1935
I must admit I was initially unsure about voting for Adolf Hitler, but when I heard about his sensible pro-life stance and opposition to non-Christians, I was all for him. I mean, those are the issues that really matter, right? His foreign policy decisions have also been first rate. I think the invasion of France has been a damn good idea, and we'll definitely defeat the insurgents in the next few months. And with their new powers, the Gestapo have been doing a fine job of eradicating the terrorist threat in the Fatherland. I often see them making arrests, which just goes to show how lucky we are to have them - our enemies are everywhere. I'm sure that the stories of human rights abuses in internment camps like Auschwitz are just liberal lies. So that's why I support our President. He's a fine Christian man, and I will not even listen to anyone who doesn't think so.
>north
You're an immobile computer, remember?
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 am pretty sure suggesting a revolution or anything similar would qualify someone as a terrorist under the Patriot Act or some other law that may be passed under the same spirit.
Despite that, revolutions have a pretty high probability to go awfully wrong. Just because one went right doesn't guarantee the next will.
You know the drill - register as a voter and mobilize your community (visit your neighbors, propose meetings and other forms of discussion where you can explore your differences and inform yourselves about all candidates) so everyone in it can and will exercise their right - and duty - to vote well.
It's your country and your laws. Take them back.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Nah, the 7 million who died didn't do it in death camps; you're confusing them with the Nazis. Most of those 7 million deaths were in the Ukraine in the 30's. They were farmers who had a bunch of really bad crop years. The apparatchiks running things from Moscow didn't want to admit a problem to their masters and thought the farmers were holding back food. They had the police and army take all the food, including the seed grain for the next year, to feed the urban populations who might riot if they went hungry too long. So the farmers starved to death on their own lands.
Not that the Gulags were vacation spots. They were forced labour camps that didn't include much concern for worker safety. People often died there from "occupational hazards", for trying to escape, or for not being completely subservient to the overseers. Gulag convicts effectively had no rights. But the Gulags weren't death camps in the same way that German concentration camps like Auschwitz, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka were designed to kill the convicts. Solzhenitzin got to write Gulag Archipelago because he lived through it. The Russians preferred to wring out as much cheap, effectively slave, labour out of them as possible instead.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire