Bovard points out that the FBI is supposed to get a warrant from the FISA court before turning all carnivorous on somebody. But that didn't always happen.
...the foreign intelligence surveillance court made a ruling, I believe, in late 2000 or early 2001, before 9/11, in which it listed over 70 cases in which it felt the FBI had given it false information or misleading information, as far as -- on its search warrants for these foreign intelligence cases or how the information was being used.
Well, the Justice Department would not even give Congress a copy of that court decision, which the FBI was hitting very hard. The Justice Department felt that the members of Congress were not entitled to it. I mean, there's just complete secrecy here. I believe the attorney general sends, like, a two-paragraph memo to Congress once or twice a year listing how many different wiretaps have been authorized by this surveillance court.
Mr. Bovard says that the Patriot Act "sanctifies Carnivore," giving the government nearly free reign to do whatever they want.
BOVARD: Yes....one of the frauds of the Patriot Act was that they labeled Carnivore as the equivalent of a pen register of a wiretap on a phone line, which only makes a record of the incoming and outcoming phone call number. And they were pretending that Carnivore only tracks the names and addresses -- the names and subject lines of the e-mail, but it doesn't. I mean, this is simply not what this system's power is. The system can copy all the e-mail of all the people on the -- who use that Internet service provider.
LAMB: The entire Internet service provider?
BOVARD: Correct...I mean, this is a sweeping violation of privacy. There was actually a case when the -- with the FBI, when they were doing surveillance -- I believe their Usama bin Laden working group in early 2000 was using Carnivore. And a lawyer who was involved in that case insisted that some of the evidence that they had acquired not be used because they had used Carnivore and they had -- and they had swept in the e-mail of a number of other people who had no involvement in the case but happened to be using the same Internet service provider. And the FBI lawyer was very concerned about that. Congress was not.
LAMB: Why not? Why did Congress giving the Justice Department this lopsided win on the Patriot Act, if there's so much wrong with it?
BOVARD: Congress was completely intimated. I mean, John Ashcroft...
LAMB: Why?
BOVARD: Many of the congressmen were afraid that if they did not quickly grant new power, and if there were a second round of terrorist attacks, that Congress would be blamed. And Ashcroft -- well, a number of people implied that that would be the case. So there was -- there was terror of being criticized.
...the Patriot Act was the biggest bait and switch in U.S. constitutional history. This was an act that was advertised as targeting terrorists, but there are new surveillance and confiscation powers that can be used for anybody accused of violating any of the 3,000 crimes in the federal statute book. And the Patriot Act is already being used against lot of other types of accused criminals.
There was a case in which the Justice Department invoked the Patriot Act to confiscate bank accounts of telemarketers who were accused of fraud because the confiscation powers under the Patriot Act are so broad and so difficult to challenge, and in many cases, don't require criminal conviction.
FISA covers the rules under which telecoms may provide customer call records and other data to the government. Those laws must also be followed, not just the tapping of calls made by Americans. Until now, almost all attention has been paid to what happened after 9/11. It is time for more scrutiny of the events that occured before then, because Bush lawbreaking began as soon as the drapes were changed in the White House.
There may not be enough evidence to go to trial with, but it's more than enough for Congressional hearings and for mainstream news outlets to invest more of their considerable resources into digging up enough to go to trial. One thing's for sure: the evidence is out there.
By JC Garrett
