FBI Tried to Cover Patriot Act Abuses With Flawed, Retroactive Subpoenas, Audit Finds

[kpete]

FBI Tried to Cover Patriot Act Abuses With Flawed, Retroactive Subpoenas, Audit Finds
By Ryan Singel March 13, 2008 | 1:04:30

FBI headquarters officials sought to cover their informal and possibly illegal acquisition of phone records on thousands of Americans from 2003 to 2005 by issuing 11 improper, retroactive "blanket" administrative subpoenas in 2006 to three phone companies that are under contract to the FBI, according to an audit released Thursday.

Top officials at the FBI's counter-terrorism division signed the blanket subpoenas "retroactively to justify the FBI's acquisition of data through the exigent letters or or other informal requests," the Justice Department's Inspector General Glenn Fine found.

The revelations come in a follow-up report to Fine's 2007 finding that the FBI abused a key Patriot Act power, known as a National Security Letter. That first reports showed that FBI agents were routinely sloppy in using the self-issued subpoenas and issued hundreds that claimed fake emergencies.

With the flawed follow-up letters, the Counterterrorism division attempted to provide retroactive legal justification for telephone data the division had gotten on 3,860 phone numbers, gotten either through verbal requests to the companies or false emergency requests.

more at:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/03/fbi-tried-to-co.html

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[ThomWV]

2. Certainly a crime has been committed here, by a Government Official no less.

So why hasn't someone been indicted, taken to trial, convicted? What in hell has gone wrong with our justice system when the greatest injustices are done by the Department of Justice?

[hootinholler]

5. We no longer have a Department of Justice...

It is now a Department of Just Us!



-Hoot

[annabanana]

3. Oh kick friggen kickety kick kick

MORE proof of crimes committed!

What is the threshold? WHAT?

[Supersedeas]

4. like shredding documents only generating them after the fact to cover-up wrong-doing

[Jeffersons Ghost]

6. K&R