http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/20/AR2007032000921.html
The Justice Department's inspector general told a committee of angry House members yesterday that
the FBI may have violated the law or government policies as many as 3,000 times since 2003 as agents secretly collected the telephone, bank and credit card records of U.S. citizens and foreign nationals residing here.
Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said that according to the FBI's own estimate, as many as 600 of these violations could be "cases of serious misconduct" involving the improper use of "national security letters" to compel telephone companies, banks and credit institutions to produce records.
National security letters are comparable to subpoenas but are issued directly by the bureau without court review. They largely target records of transactions rather than personal documents or conversations. An FBI tally showed that the bureau made an average of 916 such requests each week from 2003 to 2005, but Fine told the House Judiciary Committee that FBI recordkeeping has been chaotic and "significantly understates" the actual use of that tool.
Fine, amplifying the criticisms he made in a March 9 report,
attributed the FBI's "troubling" abuse of the letters to "mistakes, carelessness, confusion, sloppiness, lack of training, lack of adequate guidance and lack of adequate oversight."
https://www.eff.org/wp/patterns-misconduct-fbi-intelligence-violations
- From 2001 to 2008, the FBI reported to the IOB approximately 800 violations of laws, Executive Orders, or other regulations governing intelligence investigations, although this number likely significantly under-represents the number of violations that actually occurred.
- From 2001 to 2008, the FBI investigated, at minimum, 7000 potential violations of laws, Executive Orders, or other regulations governing intelligence investigations.
- Based on the proportion of violations reported to the IOB and the FBI’s own statements regarding the number of NSL violations that occurred, the actual number of violations that may have occurred from 2001 to 2008 could approach , Executive Order, or other regulations governing intelligence investigations.
- From 2001 to 2008, the FBI engaged in a number of flagrant legal violations, including:
- submitting false or inaccurate declarations to courts.
- using improper evidence to obtain federal grand jury subpoenas.
- accessing password protected documents without a warrant.
The FBI's systemic abuse of NSLs has been well-documented — both by Justice Department investigations and through litigation and scrutiny of FBI practices by EFF. As noted above, in reports from 2007 and 2008, the Inspector General found that, between 2003 to 2006, t
he FBI may have committed as many as 6,400 violations of the FBI’s NSL authority
From 2001 to 2008, the FBI frequently and flagrantly violated laws intended to check abusive intelligence investigations of American citizens.
https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/unleashed-and-unaccountable-fbi-report.pdf
A 2007 Inspector General audit revealed that from 2003 through 2005 the FBI issued over 140,000 National Security Letters — secret demands for certain account information from telecommunications companies, financial institutions, and credit agencies that require no judicial approval — almost half of which targeted Americans. It found:
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The FBI so negligently managed this Patriot Act authority it did not even know how many National Security Letters it had issued, which resulted in three years of false reporting to Congress; 23
• FBI agents repeatedly ignored or confused the requirements of the authorizing statutes and used National Security Letters to collect private information about individuals two or three times removed from the actual subjects of FBI investigations; 7
• Sixty percent of the audited files did not have the required supporting documentation, and 22 percent contained at least one unreported legal violation; 24
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FBI supervisors circumvented the law by using control files to improperly issue National Security Letters when no authorizing investigation existed.25
• The FBI was increasingly using National Security Letters to gather information on U.S. persons (57 percent in 2006, up from 53 percent in 2005); 27
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High-ranking FBI officials improperly issued eleven “blanket National Security Letters” in 2006 seeking data on 3,860 telephone numbers, in an effort to hide that the data had been illegally collected with “exigent letters” (see below); 28 and
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None of the “blanket National Security Letters” complied with FBI policy, and several imposed unlawful non-disclosure requirements, or “gag orders,” on National Security Letter recipients
Attempting to assuage concerns that the FBI would misuse this expanded authority by targeting First Amendment-protected activity, FBI
Director Robert Mueller said in 2002 that the FBI had no plans to infiltrate mosques.53 Nonetheless, in the ensuing years there was a sharp increase in the FBI's controversial use of informants as agents provocateur in mosques and other Muslim community organizations.5
The FBI response revealed that FBI terrorism investigators from a variety of different
field offices had collected information about peaceful political activity of environmental activists, peace advocates, and faith-based groups that had nothing to do with terrorism.
For example, a Detroit FBI field office memorandum entitled “Detroit Domain Management” asserts that “
because Michigan has a large Middle-Eastern and Muslim population, it is prime territory for attempted radicalization and recruitment” by State Department-designated terrorist groups that originate in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. 92 Based on this unsubstantiated assertion of a potential threat of recruitment by terrorist groups on the other side of the world, the Detroit FBI opened a “domain assessment” to collect and map information on all Muslims and people of Middle-Eastern descent in Michigan, treating all of them as suspect based on nothing more than their race, religion, and national origin.
During the FBI’s relentless investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks, for instance, The New York Times reported that several people falling under suspicion lost jobs, were placed on watch lists, had citizenship and visa applications denied, and personal relationships destroyed.99
The FBI publicly hounded bioterrorism researcher Steven Hatfill for over a year, following him so closely with up to eight FBI surveillance cars that one of them once ran over his foot.100 FBI officials later acknowledged Hatfill was completely innocent, and the Justice Department paid him $4.6 million in damages. T
he FBI then turned its sites on another researcher, Bruce Ivins, who suffered a mental breakdown and committed suicide.
When Congress debated the first Patriot Act reauthorization in April 2005, FBI Director
Robert Mueller testified that he was unaware of any “substantiated” allegations of abuse of Patriot Act authorities.199 The 2007 IG
audit later revealed the FBI self-reported 19 Patriot Act-related violations of law or policy to the Intelligence Oversight Board between 2003 and 2005.
According to a 2010 IG report, after ACLU FOIA requests exposed inappropriate FBI spying on a Pittsburgh anti-war rally in 2006, unidentified
FBI officials concocted a false story claiming the surveillance was an attempt to identify a person related to a validly-approved terrorism investigation who they believed would attend the rally, not an effort to monitor the activities of the anti-war group. 211 The FBI presented this false story to the public in press releases and to Congress
through testimony by Director Mueller. When Sen. Leahy requested documentation regarding the FBI’s investigation,
this false story fell apart because there was no relevant Pittsburgh terrorism investigation.
FBI officials then developed a second false story that circulated internally and ultimately sent to Congress a statement for the record that claimed documents couldn’t be provided because the investigation was ongoing. When the IG investigated the matter, the FBI failed to provide internal e-mails that may have identified who in the FBI concocted these false stories.212
A 2006 FBI intelligence report called “Radicalization: From Conversion to Jihad” asserts that “
indicators” that a person is progressing on a path to becoming a terrorist include: • Wearing traditional Muslim attire • Growing facial hair • Frequent attendance at a mosque or prayer group • Travel to a Muslim country • Increased activity in a pro-Muslim social group or cause • Proselytizing
More troubling, however, are incidents in which the FBI targeted activists with armed raids. In September 2010,
dozens of FBI agents conducted simultaneous raids on peace and labor activists’ homes and offices in Chicago, Minneapolis, and Grand Rapids, Mich., seizing documents, computers, and cell phones.265 An FBI spokesman said the searches were part of a Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation “into activities concerning the material support of terrorism,” but there was no “imminent danger” to the public. The FBI also served fourteen of the activists with subpoenas commanding their appearance before a grand jury in Chicago. One activist’s bank account was frozen.
More than three years later, none of the activists has been charged with a crime, raising troubling questions about whether these aggressive raids were necessary or justified.
