The episode was outlined in a Justice Department report that concluded the FBI had abused its intelligence-gathering privileges by issuing inadequately
documented "national security letters" from 2003 to 2006, after which changes were put in place that the report called sound.
A report a year ago by the Justice Department's inspector general disclosed that abuses involving national security letters had occurred from 2003 through 2005 and helped provoke the changes. But the report makes it clear that the abuses persisted in 2006 and disclosed that 60 percent of the nearly 50,000 security letters issued that year by the FBI targeted Americans.
Because U.S. citizens enjoy constitutional protections against unreasonable
searches and seizures, judicial warrants are ordinarily required for government surveillance. But national security letters are approved only by FBI officials and are not subject to judicial approval; they routinely demand certain types of personal data, such as telephone, e-mail and financial records, while barring the recipient from disclosing that the information was requested or supplied.
According to the findings by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, the FBI tried to work around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees clandestine spying in the United States, after it twice rejected an FBI request in 2006 to obtain certain records. The court had concluded "the 'facts' were too thin" and the "request implicated the target's First Amendment rights," the report said.
But the FBI went ahead and got the records anyway by using a national security letter. The FBI's general counsel, Valerie E. Caproni, told investigators it was appropriate to issue the letters in such cases because she disagreed with the court's conclusions."
Big bro 43 is dismantling our civil rights in relationship to FISA also.
The article "Bush blasts House surveillance bill" at click here states:
President Bush said Thursday that the House Democrats' version of a terrorist-surveillance bill would undermine the nation's security and that if it reaches his desk, he will veto it. The American people understand the stakes in this struggle. They want their children to be safe from terror.
Bush said the House bill 'could reopen dangerous intelligence gaps by putting in place a cumbersome court approval process that would make it harder to collect intelligence on foreign terrorists.'
Democrats responded, but also did GOP Sen. Arlen Specter who said "The president can't have a blank check," Specter said in an interview. "If you close down the courts, there's no check and balance." He added: "Wiretaps are important for national security.
There's no doubt about that. Al-Qaida and terrorism continue to be a major threat to this country. It is my hope that the president will not find it necessary to veto the bill, that we'll be able to work it out."
Specter remembers that FISA was enacted because too many innocent Americans were monitored by "Tricky Dick"! With this ghoul and his FBI using national security letters and his illegal eavesdropping on US citizens, big bro 43 makes Nixon look like a piker.
He has ruined our international standing with GWOT and torturing prisoners. The article "Bush vetoes bill outlawing CIA waterboarding" at
click here states
"President George W. Bush on Saturday vetoed legislation passed by Congress that would have banned the CIA from using wateboarding and
other controversial interrogation techniques. Lawmakers included the anti-torture measure in a broader bill authorizing U.S. intelligence activities."Because the danger remains, we need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists," Bush said in his weekly radio address. He added that the vetoed legislation "would diminish these vital tools."
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