So we've all heard about the FBI's misuse of national security letters. The Justice Department's inspector general came out with a report on March 9 describing "serious misuse" of the letters, which are secret subpoena-like documents that can be sent to businesses including banks, telephone companies, and ISPs: http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/s0703b/final.pdf I wrote about the inspector general's report here: http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6166015.html And in fact the inspector general, Glenn Fine, is going to be testifying about them in the Senate on Wednesday at 10am ET: http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearing.cfm?id=2616 Fine showed up before a House committee on Tuesday and faced a hostile audience -- not that the FBI's illegal acts are his fault, mind you, but Bush administration officials seem oddly reluctant to testify in public under oath nowadays: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/20/AR2007032000921.html The odd thing is that everyone, or nearly everyone, seems to think this is entirely unexpected. In fact, it's a natural consequence of giving the federal government more and more power over the years (national security letters were made much more powerful by the Patriot Act). Incentives matter, and the FBI has plenty of incentives to expand its power and surveillance ability and precious few incentives to preserve Americans' constitutional liberties. To give credit to EPIC, they realized this and sent a letter to the Senate in June 2006 asking for more oversight: http://www.epic.org/privacy/surveillance/sen_iob_letter.pdf So have libertarian writers, who for years have called national security letters "the ultimate constitutional farce," which is about right. The letters represent FBI agents _authorizing themselves_ to seize information without bothering to get a judge's approval, after all: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/napolitano2.html Occasionally other evidence about illegal FBI eavesdropping comes to light, which is what I described in an article published two days before the DOJ's report: http://news.com.com/2100-1039_3-6165067.html That article outlines how FBI agent Scott Wenther submitted a 42-page sworn affidavit that was intentionally designed to mislead the court into approving what a judge called an "illegal" wiretap. I've put the some of the court documents here: http://politechbot.com/docs/fbi.agent.scott.wenther.affidavit.030607.txt http://politechbot.com/docs/fbi.wenther.opinion.030607.pdf http://politechbot.com/docs/fbi.wenther.defendant.brief.030607.pdf This is of course the same federal police agency that is using our tax dollars to lobby Congress to mandate data retention, which should make us think twice about how _that_ nice part of the surveillance apparatus will be used and misused: http://www.politechbot.com/2007/01/24/not-just-isps/ -Declan _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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