FBI Admits “Misusing” Patriot Act
by Jeff Davis
You know all those draconian new “security laws” that were brought in after 9/11? Remember Dubya and Cheney and Rush Limbaugh swearing to us all on a stack of Bibles that they would never, ever be misused against ordinary Americans? There was always the implication that the Patriot Act would only be used against wicked, dark-skinned Muslims? Well, SER-PRISE, SER-PRISE!!
A Yahoo news article reports that “The FBI improperly and, in some cases, illegally used the USA Patriot Act to secretly obtain personal information about people in the United States…. And for three years the FBI has underreported to Congress how often it forced businesses to turn over the customer data….FBI agents sometimes demanded the data without proper authorization, according to the 126-page audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. At other times, the audit found, the FBI improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances.”
The same article continues: “At issue are the security letters, a power outlined in the Patriot Act that the Bush administration pushed through Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The letters, or administrative subpoenas, are used in suspected terrorism and espionage cases. They allow the FBI to require telephone companies, Internet service providers, banks, credit bureaus and other businesses to produce highly personal records about their customers or subscribers without a judge’s approval.”
Under the Patriot Act, the FBI issues something called a “security letter” off its own which acts in lieu of a judge’s decision or court order. It allows wiretapping and covert searches and…well, actually, no one is quite sure just what an FBI “security letter” DOES allow. Possibly covert arrest. Possibly secret trial. Possibly secret execution or transfer to Guantanamo Bay where the torturers with their needles and electrodes wait. No one knows exactly what is being done under these unsupervised FBI “security letters.”
The same article notes “The FBI vastly underreported the numbers. In 2005, the FBI told Congress that its agents in 2003 and 2004 had delivered only 9,254 national security letters seeking e-mail, telephone or financial information on 3,501 U.S. citizens and legal residents over the previous two years. Over the entire three-year period, the audit found the FBI issued 143,074 national security letters requesting customer data from businesses.” 134,000-odd documents allowing the Bureau to behave unconstitutionally is a lot to “forget.”
The article also notess “The FBI also used so-called exigent letters, signed by officials at FBI headquarters who were not authorized to sign national security letters, to obtain information. In at least 700 cases, these exigent letters were sent to three telephone companies to get toll billing records and subscriber information. ‘In many cases, there was no pending investigation associated with the request at the time the exigent letters were sent,’ the audit concluded. The letters inaccurately said the FBI had requested subpoenas for the information requested when, in fact, it had not, the audit found.”
In other words, the Patriot Act has become simply a convenience for the FBI to use in their daily routine, in order to get around all those annoying little obstacles like the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and assorted court decisions. The “security letters” issued under the Patriot Act are simply fig leaves allowing the FBI to do whatever the hell they want to do, to anyone they want, and with no supervision or accountability to anyone. This is part of the “democracy and freedom” we are allegedly trying to impose in Iraq. Those Iraqis who lived under Saddam’s secret police would no doubt find it familiar.