FBI Violations May Number 3,000, Official Says

[cal04]

Source: R. Jeffrey Smith,Washington Post Staff Writer

The Justice Department's inspector general told a committee of angry House members yesterday that the FBI may have violated the law or government policies as many as 3,000 times since 2003 as agents secretly collected the telephone, bank and credit card records of U.S. citizens and foreign nationals residing here.

Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said that according to the FBI's own estimate, as many as 600 of these violations could be "cases of serious misconduct" involving the improper use of "national security letters" to compel telephone companies, banks and credit institutions to produce records.

National security letters are comparable to subpoenas but are issued directly by the bureau without court review. They largely target records of transactions rather than personal documents or conversations. An FBI tally showed that the bureau made an average of 916 such requests each week from 2003 to 2005, but Fine told the House Judiciary Committee that FBI recordkeeping has been chaotic and "significantly understates" the actual use of that tool.

Fine, amplifying the criticisms he made in a March 9 report, attributed the FBI's "troubling" abuse of the letters to "mistakes, carelessness, confusion, sloppiness, lack of training, lack of adequate guidance and lack of adequate oversight."

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/20/AR2007032000921.html

[habitual]

1. i don't understand why the senate hasn't taken

the immediate step of revoking this as well. They did it with alberto and his right to appoint, why in the world aren't they doing it here, the abuse is there!!

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

2. Also...

Why are heads not rolling in front of The Harriet Hoover Building?

[Supersedeas]

3. Al Gonzo is 'one heck of uh' manager

[donkeyotay]

4. There sure are a lot of terrists here. nt