FBI Audit Finds Thousands of Violations of Privacy

Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 ...
From: "Institute for Public Accuracy" ...
Subject: FBI Audit Finds Thousands of Violations of Privacy
To: public@lists.accuracy.org


Institute for Public Accuracy
915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org
___________________________________________________

PM Thursday, June 14, 2007

FBI Audit Finds Thousands of Violations of Privacy

The Washington Post reports today: "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 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..."
[See
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/13/AR2007061302453.html
for more information.]

GREG NOJEIM, [via David McGuire, mcGuire@cdt.org], http://www.cdt.org
Nojeim is counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology. He
said today: "The FBI's frequent misuse of so-called 'National
Security Letters' to obtain sensitive information about Americans
without judicial approval highlights the dangers NSLs pose to privacy
and confirms the need to reestablish meaningful checks and balances
on governmental powers. ... These revelations, however, are not
surprising given the extent to which NSLs bypass the checks and
balances normally relied on to ensure that innocent Americans aren't
caught in FBI dragnets."
Nojeim added: "The massive increase in the use of National
Security Letters authorized by the PATRIOT Act has been a privacy
nightmare for Americans. No compelling reason has ever been offered
for why investigators cannot consult a judge before getting records
from banks, telephone companies, and credit bureaus. In light of
these recent violations, NSLs should replaced in most cases with a
timely system for meaningful judicial review of investigative
requests."

LISA GRAVES, lgraves@cnss.org, http://www.cnss.org
Graves is the deputy director at the Center for National Security
Studies. She said today: "It is no surprise that the FBI violated the
rules for the collection of information on people in the U.S. after
Congress unwisely expanded its unchecked power to do so. The National
Security Letter, which was converted into a National Security
Subpoena last year by a Congress willing to do the administration's
bidding, remains a very powerful and intrusive tool that has
virtually no independent checks against its abuse. But for this
mandatory audit, the American people would continue to be misled by
this administration's false assurances that these post 9-11 powers
were not being abused."
Graves added: "There is now clear proof that Americans' privacy
has been violated countless times and also that the FBI has created a
massive 'Investigative Data Warehouse,' with more records than there
are people in the U.S. and which includes private information about
people who have done nothing wrong or been cleared of any wrongdoing.
Congress should investigate this further and pass wise legislation by
Congresswoman Harman to require judicial approval before an
American's financial, insurance, phone or Internet records are turned
over to the FBI and disseminated through this new data warehouse."

For more information, contact the Institute for Public Accuracy at
(202) 347-0020; or David Zupan at (541) 484-9167.


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