[Infowarrior] - Congress Holds Hearings on Improper F.B.I. Spying

[Richard Forno]

March 20, 2007
Congress Holds Hearings on Improper F.B.I. Spying
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 1:12 p.m. ET

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-National-Security-Letters.html?pagewan
ted=print

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republicans and Democrats sternly warned the FBI on
Tuesday that it could lose its broad power to collect telephone, e-mail and
financial records to hunt terrorists if the agency doesn't quickly address
widespread abuses of the authority detailed in a recent internal
investigation.

Their threats came as the Justice Department's chief watchdog, Glenn A.
Fine, told a House panel that the FBI engaged in widespread and serious
misuse of its authority in illegally collecting the information from
Americans and foreigners through so-called national security letters.

If the FBI doesn't move swiftly to correct the mistakes and problems
revealed last week in Fine's 130-page report, ''you probably won't have NSL
authority,'' said Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., a supporter of the power,
referring to the data requests by their initials.

''I hope that this would be a lesson to the FBI that they can't get away
with this and expect to maintain public support,'' said Rep. James
Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, the House Judiciary Committee's former
Republican chairman. ''Let this be a warning.''

The FBI's failure to establish sufficient controls or oversight for
collecting the information constituted ''serious and unacceptable''
failures, Fine told the committee.

Democrats called Fine's findings an example of how the Justice Department
has used broad counterterrorism authorities Congress granted in the wake of
the Sept. 11 attacks to trample on privacy rights.

''This was a serious breach of trust,'' said Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the
Judiciary chairman. ''The department had converted this tool into a handy
shortcut to illegally gather vast amounts of private information while at
the same time significantly underreporting its activities to Congress.''

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said Congress should revise the USA Patriot
Act, which substantially loosened controls over the letters.

''We do not trust government always to be run by angels, especially not this
administration,'' Nadler said. ''It is not enough to mandate that the FBI
fix internal management problems and recordkeeping, because the statute
itself authorizes the unchecked collection of information on innocent
Americans.''

Some Republicans, however, said the FBI's expanded spying powers were vital
to tracking terrorists.

''The problem is enforcement of the law, not the law itself,'' said Rep.
Lamar Smith of Texas, the panel's senior GOP member. ''We need to be
vigilant to make sure these problems are fixed.''

Fine said he did not believe the problems were intentional, although he
acknowledged he could not rule that out.

''We believe the misuses and the problems we found generally were the
product of mistakes, carelessness, confusion, sloppiness lack of training,
lack of adequate guidance and lack of adequate oversight,'' Fine said.

''It really was unacceptable and inexcusable what happened here,'' he added
under questioning.

Valerie Caproni, the FBI's general counsel, said she took responsibility for
the abuses and believed they could be fixed in a matter of months.

''We're going to have to work to get the trust of this committee back, and
we know that's what we have to do, and we're going to do it,'' she said.

In a review of headquarters files and a sampling of just four of the FBI's
56 field offices, Fine found 48 violations of law or presidential directives
during between 2003 and 2005, including failure to get proper authorization,
making improper requests and unauthorized collection of telephone or
Internet e-mail records. He estimated that ''a significant number of ...
violations throughout the FBI have not been identified or reported.''

The bureau has launched an audit of all 56 field offices to determine the
full extent of the problem. The Senate Judiciary Committee is to hear
Wednesday from Fine and FBI Director Robert Mueller on the same topic.

In 1986, Congress first authorized FBI agents to obtain electronic records
without approval from a judge using national security letters. The letters
can be used to acquire e-mails, telephone, travel records and financial
information, like credit and bank transactions.

In 2001, the Patriot Act eliminated any requirement that the records belong
to someone under suspicion. Now an innocent person's records can be obtained
if FBI field agents consider them merely relevant to an ongoing terrorism or
spying investigation.

Fine's review, authorized by Congress over Bush administration objections,
concluded the number of national security letters requested by the FBI
skyrocketed after the Patriot Act became law in 2001.

Fine found more than 700 cases in which FBI agents obtained telephone
records through ''exigent letters'' which asserted that grand jury subpoenas
had been requested for the data, when in fact such subpoenas never been
sought.