Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 5 februar
2011 / Time Line February 5, 2011
Version 3.5
4. Februar 2011, 6. Februar 2011
02/05/2011
The FBI Has Been Violating Your Liberties in Ways That May Shock
You
As Congress seeks to renew the Patriot Act, new information exposes
egregious FBI violations.
By Julianne Escobedo Shepherd
http://www.alternet.org/story/149768/the_fbi_has_been_violating_your_liberties_in_ways_that_may_shock_you/
Over the last decade, the FBI has been found to violate the
Constitution countless times under the guise of the Patriot Act,
including a 2007 scandal that led FBI head Robert Mueller to
publicly apologize for the preponderance of security abuses,
misconduct and violation of civil liberties on his watch.
We’ve known since its enactment in 2001 that the Patriot Act,
with its gross expansion of law enforcement power and murky
reporting requirements, was just a rulebook waiting to be
spoiled.
But according to a new report released by the Electronic Frontier
Foundation (EFF), the FBI’s violations go far beyond what has
been reported.
Since July 2009, EFF has been involved in litigation with seven
different federal agencies for ignoring EFF’s requests for
information submitted in 2008. In December 2009, the CIA, NSA,
Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Department
of Justice, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and
Department of State were ordered by the Court to comply with
EFF’s requests under the Freedom of Information Act, though
it did not receive the complete papers from the FBI until October
2010.
The resulting 2,500-page document consists of FBI reports to the
citizen-run Intelligence Oversight Board during the years
2001-2008. Consistently, documents released from the IOB reveal
investigations of abuse that often have not been reported to
Congress or the Department of Justice as required. But EFF’s
analysis, pored over for several months, illuminates exactly how,
when and why these investigations happened, and the results are
shocking.
First, the numbers: EFF found that, since 9/11, the FBI has been
responsible for up to 40,000 violations. Most often, said
violations included bucking guidelines for internal oversight,
abusing the National Security Letters and trampling on the Fourth
Amendment. This, in tandem with the IOB’s weakened capacity
for oversight under President George W. Bush, has resulted in
nothing short of disaster. In 2008, Bush revoked the IOB’s
right to refer violations to the Attorney General, and eliminated
the agency’s requirement to report quarterly to the IOB. As
EFF found, "The FBI’s disregard for its own internal
oversight requirements and the Bureau’s failure to timely
report violations to the IOB undermined the safeguards established
to protect civil liberties violations from occurring." While the Barack Obama
administration restored a few of those changes, it still has not
provided the proper transparency needed for a true
citizen-protective oversight board or fully disclosed its
makeup.
Some of the more egregious abuses, according to EFF’s
report:
- Private entities such as phone companies, banks and Internet
providers assisted the FBI’s National Security Letters abuse
with alarming frequency, turning over information without valid
legal justification in more than half of all case.
- Between 2001-2008, the average time between when a violation
was committed, and when it was reported to the IOB, was 2.5
years.
- During that same time frame, the FBI was found to have
submitted false or inaccurate documents to courts, used "improper
evidence" to obtain subpoenas, and accessed password-protected
documents without a warrant.
This is government spying, in no uncertain terms.
In his bill to renew the Patriot Act, Senator Leahy called for "a
higher standard" from the government, including "a statement of
facts showing reasonable grounds to believe the tangible things are
relevant to an authorized investigation and pertain to (a) an agent
of a foreign power, (b) the activities of a suspected agent, or (c)
an individual in contact with or known to a suspected agent of
foreign power."
Lip service is mighty, but without true reform to the articles like
Lone Wolf, It’s likely the FBI won’t stop stampeding
our rights anytime soon.
Read the full report at the EFF.
https://www.eff.org/pages/patterns-misconduct-fbi-intelligence-violations
02/05/2011
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