Tag: FBI

The New York Times reports some members of Congress were briefed earlier this month on a Department of Justice proposal for new FBI guidelines that loosen surveillance restrictions and that a few Senators lodged objections.

The senators said the new guidelines would allow the F.B.I. to open an investigation of an American, conduct surveillance, pry into private records and take other investigative steps “without any basis for suspicion.”

The plan “might permit an innocent American to be subjected to such intrusive surveillance based in part on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or on protected First Amendment activities,” the letter said. It was signed by Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey gave this unreassuring description of the plan: [More...]

The FBI is up to new tricks:

The FBI has recently adopted a novel investigative technique: posting hyperlinks that purport to be illegal videos of minors having sex, and then raiding the homes of anyone willing to click on them.

Undercover FBI agents used this hyperlink-enticement technique, which directed Internet users to a clandestine government server, to stage armed raids of homes in Pennsylvania, New York, and Nevada last year. The supposed video files actually were gibberish and contained no illegal images.

Today it's kiddie links, what will it be tomorrow? Links to sites offering information on growing pot? Links to sites offering prescription medicaton? Links to sites critical of the Government?

Be careful where you click, you may be next. [Hat tip to Blawg Review.]

Leading with this week's news that telephone companies shut down FBI wiretaps because the agency failed to pay its bills, an editorial in today's Denver Post compares the FBI to "keystone cops."

In addition to the telephone bill embarassment, the Post points out:

The late payments were part of a larger pattern of loose practices when it comes to tracking money sent to field offices for undercover operations.

It's one of several scandals the agency has endured in recent years. A 2002 audit showed hundreds of guns and laptops could not be accounted for. Last year, the Justice Department's inspector general told members of Congress the FBI may have violated policy or law more than 3,000 times as it collected telephone, bank and credit card records using national security letters. (The letters are essentially administrative subpoenas that can be issued by the agency without court review.)

With FISA hearings again on the horizon, the Post says we should be paying attention to the FBI's problems: [More...]

Don't miss the Evidence of Misjustice segment on 60 Minutes tonight. It will air the results of a joint investigation with the Washington Post on the use of the discredited comparative bullet lead analysis technique.

Hundreds of defendants sitting in prisons nationwide have been convicted with the help of an FBI forensic tool that was discarded more than two years ago. But the FBI lab has yet to take steps to alert the affected defendants or courts, even as the window for appealing convictions is closing, a joint investigation by The Washington Post and "60 Minutes" has found.

Concerns developed over the technique in 1991. TalkLeft wrote about it in 2003 (here too.) In 2004, the National Academy of Sciences concluded the technique was bunk and the FBI stopped using it in 2005. But it has refused to release the list of the 2,500 cases in which the technique was used.

Dwight E. Adams, the now-retired FBI lab director who ended the technique, said the government has an obligation to release all the case files, to independently review the expert testimony and to alert courts to any errors that could have affected a conviction.

....The Post and "60 Minutes" identified at least 250 cases nationwide in which bullet-lead analysis was introduced, including more than a dozen in which courts have either reversed convictions or now face questions about whether innocent people were sent to prison.

More....

According to a new disclosure report (mandated by the Patriot Act), there were a record number of secret FISA warrants in 2005.

A secret court approved all but one of the government's requests last year to search or eavesdrop on suspected terrorists and spies, according to Justice Department data released Tuesday.

In all, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court signed off on 2,176 warrants targeting people in the United States believed to be linked to international terror organizations or spies. The record number is more than twice as many as were issued in 2000, the last full year before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

And here's the rub:

More...

The Washington Post today publishes the first-hand account of a recipient of an FBI national security letter. His name isn't included because he's gagged from discussing it, so the Post verified it with his lawyer and publicly available documents (which I assume are the pleadings in his lawsuit brought by the ACLU which is ongoing.)

The author, who ran "a small internet access and consulting business," never gave up the documents on his client demanded in the letter and eventually the FBI said it no longer needed them. But he's still challenging the gag order that prevents him from discussing the matter.

He describes what his life was like living under a gag order.

More...