8500 National Security Letters in 2000, 47000 in 2005, as the FBI tracks our every move

more so-called "news" in the category of, "yeah, so tell me something i DIDN'T know"...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been routinely monitoring the e-mails, instant messages and cell phone calls of suspects across the United States -- and has done so, in many cases, without the approval of a court.

Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act and given to the Washington Post -- which stuck the story on page three -- show that the FBI's massive dragnet, connected to the backends of telecommunications carriers, "allows authorized FBI agents and analysts, with point-and-click ease, to receive e-mails, instant messages, cellphone calls and other communications that tell them not only what a suspect is saying, but where he is and where he has been, depending on the wording of a court order or a government directive," the Post says.

But agents don't need a court order to track to track the senders and recipients names, or how long calls or email exchanges lasted. These can be obtained simply by showing it's "relevant" to a probe.

[...]

Some transactional data is obtained using National Security Letters. The Justice Department says use of these letters has risen from 8,500 in 2000 to 47,000 in 2005, according to the Post.

[...]

The new revelations show definitively that telecommunications companies can transfer "with the click of a mouse, instantly transfer key data along a computer circuit to an FBI technology office in Quantico" upon request.

the incredibly naive notion that the fbi is illegally monitoring ONLY the electronic transactions of "suspects" is truly astounding... they are and have been monitoring every goddam electronic transaction for YEARS, and, bit by painful bit, we are finally having this godawful reality confirmed...

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Why would we be surprised that our military would be involved in domestic surveillance...?

yes, it's chilling, but i've made the assumption for quite some time that everything we do that involves an electronic network that isn't under our absolute individual control is either accessible or actively being scrutinized by any and all agencies of our government... that the defense department has adopted the same tactics as the fbi - the use of national security letters (nsl's) - to dig even deeper, should be no surprise to anybody... it's just a further indication of what i've thought right along, that we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg, and that there's still a massive bulk of shocking revelations lurking below the surface...

The military is using the FBI to skirt legal restrictions on domestic surveillance to obtain private records of Americans' Internet service providers, financial institutions and telephone companies, according to Pentagon documents.

The American Civil Liberties Union expressed outrage at the new revelations, based its conclusion on a review of more than 1,000 documents turned over by the Defense Department after it sued the agency last year for documents related to national security letters, or NSLs, investigative tools used to compel businesses to turn over customer information without a judge's order or grand jury subpoena.

"Newly unredacted documents released today reveal that the Department of Defense is using the FBI to circumvent legal limits on its own NSL power," said the ACLU, whose lawsuit was filed in Manhattan federal court.

ACLU lawyer Melissa Goodman said the documents the civil rights group studied "make us incredibly concerned." She said it would be understandable if the military relied on help from the FBI on joint investigations, but not when the FBI was not involved in a probe.

shocking... just shocking... NOT...! stay tuned... there's a LOT more to come...

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Frontline: Spying on the Home Front

i'm watching it right now... it's giving me a case of the creeps, not that i didn't have the creeps already... i suggest you give it a look... it's comprehensive, thorough, well-done, and you get to hear john yoo defend the unitary executive...

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"I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government"

the informers among us...

a recipient of a national security letter speaks out anonymously... he refused to release the requested information and is engaged in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the nsl power... he has been living under a gag order since 2004...

I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government and being made to mislead those who are close to me, especially because I have doubts about the legitimacy of the underlying investigation.

[...]

I recognize that there may sometimes be a need for secrecy in certain national security investigations. But I've now been under a broad gag order for three years, and other NSL recipients have been silenced for even longer. At some point -- a point we passed long ago -- the secrecy itself becomes a threat to our democracy. In the wake of the recent revelations, I believe more strongly than ever that the secrecy surrounding the government's use of the national security letters power is unwarranted and dangerous. I hope that Congress will at last recognize the same thing.

how very chilling... this is the very dark and disturbing world the bush administration has created for the citizens of a supposedly "free" country...

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The FBI goes from out of control to REALLY out of control

this is troubling enough...

FBI counterterrorism officials continued to use flawed procedures to obtain thousands of U.S. telephone records during a two-year period when bureau lawyers and managers were expressing escalating concerns about the practice, according to senior FBI and Justice Department officials and documents.

FBI lawyers raised the concerns beginning in late October 2004 but did not closely scrutinize the practice until last year, FBI officials acknowledged. They also did not understand the scope of the problem until the Justice Department launched an investigation, FBI officials said.

but this is even more so...

The flawed procedures involved the use of emergency demands for records, called "exigent circumstance" letters, which contained false or undocumented claims.

"false claims...?" "FALSE CLAIMS...??" undocumented claims are bad... FALSE CLAIMS are infinitely much worse...

Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote in a letter Friday to Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine: "It is . . . difficult to imagine why there should not have been swift and severe consequences for anyone who knowingly signed . . . a letter containing false statements. Anyone at the FBI who knew about that kind of wrongdoing had an obligation to put a stop to it and report it immediately."

it's not like the fbi started running out of control under the bush administration... howard zinn's perspective on the fbi captures that reality...

When people in the CIA and FBI commit crimes, how do they get handled? They don't. They're forgotten about. Do you know how many crimes have been committed by the FBI and the CIA? How many black bag jobs? Breaking and entering? Try breaking and entering. Really. Try breaking and entering in the daytime, or nighttime, and see what happens to you. Different punishments depending on what hour of the day. The FBI broke and entered again and again and again and again, hundreds and hundreds of times.

but it's been the bush administration that's given the green light to this kind of wholesale trampling of civil liberties...

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WaPo: naive or disingenuous?

the wapo chugs along with either (take your choice) 1. a tremendous naivete or, 2. staggering disingenuousness, and then is oh-so-surprised when dear leader disappoints them...

Abuse of Authority
The FBI's gross misuse of a counterterrorism device

THE EXPANSION of law enforcement powers approved by Congress after Sept. 11 and contained in the USA Patriot Act was conditioned on the notion that these new authorities would be carefully used and closely monitored. An infuriating report released Friday by the Justice Department's inspector general, Glenn A. Fine, demonstrates that the Federal Bureau of Investigation treated its new powers with anything but that kind of restraint. The report depicts an FBI cavalierly using its expanded power to issue "national security letters" without adequate oversight or justification.

as i posted yesterday, if they'd just dug this out every once in a while, the abuse of expanded law enforcement powers is simply to be expected... if ya got it, you're gonna use it...

When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying [...]

"The executive branch shall construe the provisions . . . that call for furnishing information to entities outside the executive branch . . . in a manner consistent with the president's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information..."

they might also have kept this glenn greenwald comment handy...

When a country is ruled by an individual who repeatedly and openly arrogates unto himself the power to violate the law, and specifically proclaims that he is under no obligation to account to Congress or anyone else concerning the exercise of radical new surveillance powers such as NSLs [National Security Letters], it should come as absolutely no surprise that agencies under his control freely break the law. The culture of lawlessness which the President has deliberately and continuously embraced virtually ensures, by design, that any Congressional limits on the use of executive power will be violated.

or this one from steve clemons...

We should also expect that the Patriot Act would be misused, misapplied, and distorted beyond the intention Congress and the White House had for it.

it's really sad when a one of the nation's major newspapers has to be hit upside the head with a 2x4 to get 'em to wake the hell up...

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Claims of "unintentional" Patriot Act abuses "are not credible"

an aclu news release via raw story...

"Claims that the FBI’s reported Patriot Act abuses were the “unintentional” result of outmoded computer systems and human error are not credible, the American Civil Liberties Union said today, citing evidence that agents contracted with phone companies to obtain customer records and later sought to cover up the illegal requests," the ACLU press release stated.

According to the ACLU, "The report also shows that the FBI is issuing hundreds of thousands more National Security Letters than ever imagined, and that tracking of the NSLs is sloppy, resulting in thousands of innocent Americans being entered into databases that are shared with numerous U.S. agencies and foreign governments."

anybody who buys the "unintentional" horseshit is working with a couple of bricks shy of a load...

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I'm astounded he's responding at all

he must be feeling a little pressure, don't you think...?

Bush, at a news conference after meeting with Uruguay's president, said he was briefed last week on the report from the Justice Department's internal watchdog that disclosed the FBI's transgressions involving a subpoena known as national security letters.

"My question is, `What are you going to do solve the problem and how fast can you get it solved?'" the president said.

He expressed confidence in FBI Director Robert Mueller and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. "Those problems will be addressed as quickly as possible," Bush said.

oh, golly, george... just exactly HOW are these problems going to be addressed...? YOU are the one that created the very set of circumstances that allowed this to happen... YOU are the one, you big, fat liar, who put your signature on this signing statement (below)... YOU are the one who opened this pandora's box, and NOW you say you want to "solve the problem...?" george, i don't know how to break this to you, but you ARE the problem...

When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying [...]

"The executive branch shall construe the provisions . . . that call for furnishing information to entities outside the executive branch . . . in a manner consistent with the president's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information . . . "

"solving" this problem, to me, means only one thing, george... you gotta go...

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Reality check: "The only way our form of democracy works is to realize that the President wants to be King"

steve clemons hits on the hard-core reality behind the founders' wisdom in establishing the balance of powers...

The only way our form of democracy works is to realize that the President wants to be King, that Members of Congress want to be re-elected and derive power from keeping the King in check, and that the Judiciary has ultimate authority in most cases to resolve disputes between branches of government and contending political interests. The aspirant King and the wannabe rulers in the Congress both have input into the membership of the Judiciary.

[...]

We should also expect that the Patriot Act would be misused, misapplied, and distorted beyond the intention Congress and the White House had for it.

glenn greenwald elaborates...

When a country is ruled by an individual who repeatedly and openly arrogates unto himself the power to violate the law, and specifically proclaims that he is under no obligation to account to Congress or anyone else concerning the exercise of radical new surveillance powers such as NSLs [National Security Letters], it should come as absolutely no surprise that agencies under his control freely break the law. The culture of lawlessness which the President has deliberately and continuously embraced virtually ensures, by design, that any Congressional limits on the use of executive power will be violated.

i posted on this yesterday, and i'll simply repeat what i said then...

there is no way to overstate how grave is our constitutional crisis... unless and until george and his criminal gang are removed, yadda, yadda, ad nauseam...

and deliver us from evil, amen...

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25% of FBI national security cases contained errors but none DELIBERATE

really...?

A Justice Department investigation has found pervasive errors in the FBI's use of its power to secretly demand telephone, e-mail and financial records in national security cases, officials with access to the report said yesterday.

The inspector general's audit found 22 possible breaches of internal FBI and Justice Department regulations -- some of which were potential violations of law -- in a sampling of 293 "national security letters." The letters were used by the FBI to obtain the personal records of U.S. residents or visitors between 2003 and 2005. The FBI identified 26 potential violations in other cases.

Officials said they could not be sure of the scope of the violations but suggested they could be more widespread, though not deliberate. In nearly a quarter of the case files Inspector General Glenn A. Fine reviewed, he found previously unreported potential violations.

hmmmm... a quarter of the case files reviewed had errors... some were potential law violations... they could be more widespread... how very interesting...

for review purposes...

[National security letters] enable an FBI field office to compel the release of private information without the authority of a grand jury or judge. The USA Patriot Act, enacted after the 2001 attacks, eliminated the requirement that the FBI show "specific and articulable" reasons to believe that the records it demands belong to a foreign intelligence agent or terrorist.

That law, and Bush administration guidelines for its use, transformed national security letters by permitting clandestine scrutiny of U.S. residents and visitors who are not alleged to be terrorists or spies.

nothing to see here, folks, move right along...

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