[Infowarrior] - FBI broke law for years in phone record searches

[Richard Forno]

FBI broke law for years in phone record searches
By John Solomon and Carrie Johnson
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, January 19, 2010; A01

The FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call  
records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that  
did not exist or simply persuading phone companies to provide records,  
according to internal bureau memos and interviews. FBI officials  
issued approvals after the fact to justify their actions.

E-mails obtained by The Washington Post detail how counterterrorism  
officials inside FBI headquarters did not follow their own procedures  
that were put in place to protect civil liberties. The stream of  
urgent requests for phone records also overwhelmed the FBI  
communications analysis unit with work that ultimately was not  
connected to imminent threats.

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FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni said in an interview Monday that  
the FBI technically violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act  
when agents invoked nonexistent emergencies to collect records.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/18/AR2010011803982_pf.html