FBI Should Notify Customers and Name the Phone Companies Involved, ACLU Says
ACLU Analysis of DOJ Report Online at: www.aclu.org/safefree/nationalsecurityletters/28969lgl20070309.html
WASHINGTON – Claims
that the FBI’s reported Patriot Act abuses were the “unintentional” result of
outmoded computer systems and human error are not credible, the American Civil
Liberties Union said today, citing evidence that agents contracted with phone
companies to obtain customer records and later sought to cover up the illegal
requests.
The report also shows that the FBI is issuing hundreds
of thousands more National Security Letters than ever imagined, and that
tracking of the NSLs is sloppy, resulting in thousands of innocent Americans
being entered into databases that are shared with numerous U.S. agencies and
foreign governments.
“It seems that every time the American people
entrust the Bush administration with some new power, it not only abuses that
power but also seizes additional powers without our knowledge,” said ACLU
Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. “It is long past time for Congress
to take back the civil liberties of the American people and right these
wrongs. The Attorney General and the FBI are part of the problem and
cannot be trusted to be the only solution.”
The ACLU’s criticisms
came in response to a report issued today by the Justice Department’s own
Inspector General about abuses of Patriot Act powers used to obtain sensitive
personal information such as telephone records and e-mail. The report
revealed that FBI agents have issued “at least 739” so-called “exigent letters” that
illegally circumvent even the scant requirements of the Patriot Act’s
controversial National Security Letter (NSL) provision. In some cases, NSLs were
issued “after the fact” to “cover” the illegitimate record demands, the report
said.
According to the Inspector General’s report, FBI agents
contracted with phone companies to improperly obtain customer records, saying
that subpoenas would later be issued in connection with an underlying
investigation. But in a random examination of such “exigent letters,” not
one subpoena was sent, and in many cases the requests were not tied to any
pending FBI investigations, in clear violation of the law.
“It
simply is not credible for the FBI to claim that these unauthorized and illegal
fishing expeditions were the result of human error or outmoded computer
systems,” Romero said.
Romero also expressed doubt about FBI
Director Mueller’s claim that no one was harmed by these massive privacy
breaches, saying that customers should be alerted that their telephone and
e-mail records may now be in U.S. and even foreign government databases.
“We call on the FBI to immediately disclose the identity of the
telecommunications companies that were involved and to notify the customers
whose records were obtained about this unauthorized invasion of their privacy
rights.”
Today’s report contained numerous other revelations of
abuses of the National Security Letter power and other Patriot Act powers,
including:
The ACLU also noted that the Inspector General’s
report looked at only a tiny sample of the hundreds of thousands of NSLs.
That so many violations and abuses were uncovered in such a small sample points
to major systemic problems with the FBI’s use of NSLs, the ACLU
said.
As a result of today’s revelations, the ACLU has renewed its
call to Congress to repeal the NSL provision of the Patriot Act and to exercise
its oversight powers.
"Congress must fix the fundamental
flaws with the Patriot Act," said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU
Washington Legislative Office. "The FBI abused the powers it was given in
the Patriot Act to pry in to the private lives of more Americans than ever
before in our history.”
The ACLU has successfully challenged the
procedures for issuing NSLs in two separate lawsuits. The lawsuits challenge the
National Security Letter provision of the Patriot Act, which authorizes the FBI
to demand a range of personal records without court approval, such as the
identity of a person who has visited a particular Web site on a library
computer, or who has engaged in anonymous speech on the Internet. Under the
expanded Patriot Act power, anyone who receives an NSL is forbidden, or "gagged"
from telling anyone about the record demand.
In response to the
court rulings, Congress made some minor changes to the law when it reauthorized
the Patriot Act in 2006. As today’s report demonstrates, the ACLU said, those
changes are not enough.
In a September 2004 ruling striking down
the draconian gag provision of the NSL power, Federal District Court Judge
Victor Marrero said: “As our sunshine laws and judicial doctrine attest,
democracy abhors undue secrecy. An unlimited government warrant to conceal,
effectively a form of secrecy per se, has no place in our open society.
Such a claim is especially inimical to democratic values for reasons borne out
by painful experience."
Next month Judge Marrero will hear
arguments in the ACLU’s challenge to the gag and secrecy provisions of the NSL
law as amended by Congress in 2006.
More information about
the ACLU’s challenges to the NSL power is online at www.aclu.org/nsl
ACLU analysis of the OIG report is online at: www.aclu.org/safefree/nationalsecurityletters/28969lgl20070309.html and the report itself is online at: www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/s0703b/final.pdf
An audio file of an ACLU news conference about the report is online at: www.aclu.org/multimedia/030907_call_on_DOJ-OIG_report.mp3
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