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EFF Uncovers Widespread FBI Intelligence Violations
An anonymous reader writes "EFF has uncovered widespread violations stemming from FBI intelligence investigations from 2001 — 2008. In a report released today, EFF documents alarming trends in the Bureau's intelligence investigation practices, suggesting that FBI intelligence investigations have compromised the civil liberties of American citizens far more frequently, and to a greater extent, than was previously assumed. Using documents obtained through EFF's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation, the report finds: Evidence of delays of 2.5 years, on average, between the occurrence of a violation and its eventual reporting to the Intelligence Oversight Board; reports of serious misconduct by FBI agents including lying in declarations to courts, using improper evidence to obtain grand jury subpoenas, and accessing password-protected files without a warrant; and indications that the FBI may have committed upwards of 40,000 possible intelligence violations in the 9 years since 9/11."
If you give the government an inch, they take a mile.
We've seen it before.
With this being known fact, the politicians are to blame for enacting the Patriot Act without even reading it just because they needed something to trumpet in the media that would appear patriotic after 9/11.
How long until this is swept under the rug and American Idol is the headline news again?
Mr. America walk on by your schools that do not teach Mr. America walk on by the minds that won't be reached
...and indications that the FBI may have committed upwards of 40,000 possible crimes in the 9 years since 9/11.
There, fixed that for you.
So they release this at the exact same time one of the largest middle eastern countries is undergoing a revolution? I EXPECT the FBI to be pulling shit like this, and rely on organizations like the EFF to uncover it. But if the EFF is so Tech and New Media savvy, it didn't occur to them that they might want to release this information on a slow news day as apposed to releasing it in the middle of the biggest story to hit the media in the past 2 years? there by assuring it will be completely missed by Mondays new cycle?!?! It's just plain incompetent.
The summary makes it seem like a big number but if the FBI has ~36K people working for it that's just over 1 violation per employee in those 9 years. I'd expect to make at least one mistake in 9 years.
Abuses like this aren't exactly like speeding (which aside from being quite possible to do without trying or even realizing it, is relatively harmless) - you have to go out of your way to set up wiretaps and perform other actions that violate America's core values. I can accept a small handful of instances where the time required to go through the proper channels (warrants, etc) would have taken too long, but that should be the exception rather than the rule - and some five thousand times per year is hardly an exception. That basically means one of three things - the process is broken, these people are doing things they have no need, right, or reason to do, or federal policy has agreed upon our constitution being worthless. If the latter is the case, fine - bring on the revolution, since we've voided the existence of our government and all of the laws it has created.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Here's a solution to the problem with the FBI. Prosecute each violation vigorously and to the fullest extent of the law.
You are asking the government to prosecute itself. Without a person at the top with a highly developed sense of morality it isn't likely to happen within the same branch of government. Even with such a person at the top, political reality may make it impossible. That's why we have separation of powers. It will ONLY happen if a different branch of government is the one who decides to press the issue. Expecting the executive branch to spank itself is simply wishful thinking most of the time. If congress or the judiciary can be prodded into action, then something might happen. Otherwise, forget it.
For what it's worth I don't expect much out of Congress either. Very easy to score "soft on crime" political points on someone who criticizes the FBI even if the FBI deserves it.
Although the Church Committee ostensibly ended COINTELPRO in 1971, revelations such as these that surface every few years make it clear that such tactics have *never* been abandoned by the FBI.
I am not a number - I am a free man!
You know the shows I'm talking about: the ones that show spooks and law enforcers breaking their own ethical rules (and everyone else's) in the obsessive pursuit of goals and people who have been quietly pre-convicted outside of any court or due process. They just KNOW the person is guilty... they just have to concoct some a-moral scheme to PROVE it!
These shows plant the seed that such behavior is acceptable. It can't help but have repercussions in the real world, humans being as impressionable as they are. It's "the end justifies the means" yet again. Judicial impartiality? What's that?
I cringe whenever I see an argument by the ACLU, EFF, etc that something has "compromised the civil liberties of American citizens", because they're making the wrong argument by casting it the opposite way it should be cast.
When you make a claim like that, the response is always going to be "was any harm done?" and the answer to that is usually "no, no harm was actually done" and then the response to that becomes "stop being a sissy, no harm no foul. unless you're up to something illegal, you've got nothing to worry about."
What the EFF should be claiming is that "government employees abuse the limits of their power". You have to focus the argument on the action, not the reaction. The way the Constitution is written, it doesn't guarantee the civil liberties of Americans. Instead, it limits the scope of authority of the federal government.
That "new math" you don't understand is the simple arithmetic and multiplication the rest of us learned before they let us *into* high school.
Summary for you, the idiot:
1. The data the EFF isn't everything and doesn't claim to be everything, however 33% of the potential violations in that data are NSL violations.
2. Back in 2008, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine told the House Judiciary subcommittee that a 10% review of FBI field office NSLs found 640 potential NSL violations from 2003 to 2006.
3. Oh look primary school math: (640 * 10) / 4 * 8 * 3 = 38,400. Or in words, if 10% were 640 then there were 6400 potential NSL violations over 4 years, so 1600 per year. So over the 8 years the EFF data is for 12800. Those type are 33% in the EFF data so multiply by 3 for 38400.
And yes that's extrapolating an extrapolation. But that make that very clear in their report.
It is clear that the third is the case, and that at this point revolution is the only recourse the American people have to bring their government to heel. Bush started these abuses, Obama is continuing them, and it will get worse. The TSA is groping us; the big banks are plundering our country as fast as they can; Guantanamo is still operating; Congress is proposing a kill switch for the Internet rather than fess up to the misdeeds exposed by Wikileaks; and we still don't have any jobs worth a damn here.
How much more evidence do you need, America?
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Republican Representative Darrel Issa wants the name of everyone who has filed a Freedom of Information Act request.
Exhuming McCarthy, indeed.