FBI breaks law


Using National Security as the excuse
Remember, this is just what we know about.

An internal FBI audit has found that the bureau potentially violated the law or agency rules more than 1,000 times while collecting data about domestic phone calls, e-mails and financial transactions in recent years, far more than was documented in a Justice Department report in March that ignited bipartisan congressional criticism.

The new audit covers just 10 percent of the bureau's national security investigations since 2002, and so the mistakes in the FBI's domestic surveillance efforts probably number several thousand, bureau officials said in interviews. The earlier report found 22 violations in a much smaller sampling.

The vast majority of the new violations were instances in which telephone companies and Internet providers gave agents phone and e-mail records the agents did not request and were not authorized to collect. The agents retained the information anyway in their files, which mostly concerned suspected terrorist or espionage activities.

The sample size is still small. And some provisions of the Patriot Act make it a crime in some circumstances to disclose that such a search has taken place.

Anyone want to give me odds that these are the only significant violations?

— NeoWayland

Posted: Fri - June 15, 2007 at 12:36 PM  Tag


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