Back in November of 2005, Barton Gellman described the use of ‘National Security Letters’ by the FBI.
Issued by FBI field supervisors, national security letters do not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge. They receive no review after the fact by the Justice Department or Congress. The executive branch maintains only statistics, which are incomplete and confined to classified reports. The Bush administration defeated legislation and a lawsuit to require a public accounting, and has offered no example in which the use of a national security letter helped disrupt a terrorist plot.
The burgeoning use of national security letters coincides with an unannounced decision to deposit all the information they yield into government data banks — and to share those private records widely, in the federal government and beyond. In late 2003, the Bush administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring agents to destroy their files on innocent American citizens, companies and residents when investigations closed. Late last month, President Bush signed Executive Order 13388, expanding access to those files for “state, local and tribal” governments and for “appropriate private sector entities,” which are not defined.
Gellman had all the pieces for the story that the Inspector General of the Justice Deparment broke yesterday. He noted that the letters are issued with no judicial or congressional oversight, that they maintain incomplete records, that records are no longer being destroyed, that improper information is being gathered and shared.
Folks, we’ve been here before. One thing the Church Committee dug up was a very interesting memo from former head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s intelligence operations, William C. Sullivan, to the FBI’s Assistant Director, C.D. DeLoach (actually the memo was written by ‘Section Chief F. J. Baumgardner and approved on Sullivan’s behalf by his principal deputy, J. A. Sizoo.’). I supply a copy below.
This illegality has been repeated in the post-9/11 world. Once again the Special Agent in Charge of a field office has been empowered to do black-bag jobs. This time the illegal entry is into your banking or other electronic records. Robert Mueller and Alberto Gonzales should both be fired. They should both be prosecuted. There is no excuse for going outside the law. For several years the FBI (just like the NSA) has been going around the courts and Congress because “it would be impossible to obtain legal sanction for it.”
I hate to be the little “sleeper cell” agent but anyone of the rank of JC Penney security guard and up can write those letters. It’s just a form where you fill in the blanks like a search warrant only it doesn’t require a judge’s signature or any oaths.
Furthermore, they can be faxed. If you wanted to cause some major harm to someone, all you’ve got to do is falsely identify yourself as a law enforcement officer and put a working fax number on there and all of someone’s records from the internet companies, banks, credit card companies, utility companies, phone records, you name it will be on your way in 48 hours or less!
Best part: totally free to you! Just like China, the victim pays.
I should mention that doing so is a crime so don’t do it. But in this day and age people will turn over all of your records simply after receiving a single fax.
If you’re willing to wait a couple more days, you can also get entire CDs from someone’s ISP with every single last one of their online activities from the past 30 days. Heyo!
Pax
Yes and guess what? The Democrats fully endorsed the continuation of this sort of behavior by passing HR 1, the anti-terra bill. A salesman in the business says it’s just the thing the industry needed.