FBI Found to Misuse Security Letters

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: lynn [lynn () ecgincc com]
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2008 9:36 AM
To: David Farber
Subject: FBI Found to Misuse Security Letters

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/13/AR2008031302277.html?hpid=topnews


FBI Found to Misuse Security Letters


2003-06 Audit Cites Probes of Citizens
Justice Department official Glenn A. Fine testifies about his probe of
national security letters. (By Dennis Cook -- Associated Press)

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 14, 2008; Page A03

The FBI has increasingly used administrative orders to obtain the personal
records of U.S. citizens rather than foreigners implicated in terrorism or
counterintelligence investigations, and at least once it relied on such
orders to obtain records that a special intelligence-gathering court had
deemed protected by the First Amendment, according to two government
audits released yesterday.

The episode was outlined in a Justice Department report that concluded the
FBI had abused its intelligence-gathering privileges by issuing
inadequately documented "national security letters" from 2003 to 2006,
after which changes were put in place that the report called sound.

A report a year ago by the Justice Department's inspector general
disclosed that abuses involving national security letters had occurred
from 2003 through 2005 and helped provoke the changes. But the report
makes it clear that the abuses persisted in 2006 and disclosed that 60
percent of the nearly 50,000 security letters issued that year by the FBI
targeted Americans.

snip


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