The Washington Post is reporting that in an internal audit the FBI found it may have overstepped the bounds of the law . According to the article, case agents are to isolate the improperly gathered information from case files. Which is fine, except it is likely that agents have already read through that material, and it could easily bias them in on going investigations. Important points:
But two dozen of the newly-discovered violations involved agents’ requests for information that U.S. law did not allow them to have, according to the audit results provided to The Washington Post.
FBI officials said the results confirmed what agency supervisors and outside critics feared, namely that many agents did not understand or follow the required legal procedures and paperwork requirements when collecting personal information with one of the most sensitive and powerful intelligence-gathering tools of the post-Sept. 11 era — the National Security Letter, or NSL.
The FBI also found that in 14 investigations, counterintelligence agents using NSLs improperly gathered full credit reports from financial institutions, exercising authority provided by the USA Patriot Act but meant to be applied only in counterterrorism cases.
– Washington Post (Emphasis Added)
To be fair, the FBI has said it is reworking how it trains on these procedures and is issuing new, hopefully clearer rules on these issues. And we find it comforting that the one consistency in the US government right now is it’s gross incompetance at virtually every level.
Further:
Draft FBI Rules to Curb Privacy Abuse
FBI plans huge anti-terror data-mining
[…] 10th, 2007 by pastandprologue As we covered last month, the FBI investigated itself recently, and found it broke its own rules, and the law […]