When you boil down the Bush administration’s attitude toward individual liberty concerns since Sept. 11, 2001, the essence is pretty straightforward: These compromises are crucial to the war on terror. Trust us.
A Justice Department report issued last week shows why Americans would be foolish to accept such assurances.
The report revealed the FBI’s abuse of Patriot Act powers to secretly obtain personal banking, phone and e-mail records in purported national security cases. According to the DOJ inspector general, the FBI requested information time and again without proper authorization and collected broader and more detailed records than the law allows. The report showed the agency underreported national security letter requests by about 22 percent.
Without the report – demanded by Congress against administration wishes – the public wouldn’t have any way of knowing about the abuses. It’s a prime example of the benefits of oversight.
At issue are what are known as “national security letters.” The FBI can use them to secretly obtain an individual’s phone, banking and Internet records, so long as the secrecy is essential to counter-terrorism efforts. To get one of these letters, an FBI agent must merely get approval from one of five dozen FBI supervisors.
Before passage of the Patriot Act, agents had to give specific reasons why the records were pertinent to advancing an investigation. Now, the standard is much lower – an agent merely has to prove the records are relevant to an inquiry.
In renewing the Patriot Act last year, the administration said the extraordinary authority was exercised rarely, and judiciously. It turns out that wasn’t true. The FBI made 39,000 requests for national security letters on 2003 and about 47,000 in 2005.
On at least two occasions, the IG said, the FBI got full credit reports using national security letters when it was entitled only to summary data. And in an unknown number of cases, companies who got the letters coughed up far more detailed information than the letters authorize the FBI to collect.
Just as troubling is the archiving of this material. It used to be that the government would have to destroy the material when a person was cleared. The administration changed policy in 2003, and now the information is available to other U.S. agencies.
After reviewing the IG report, criticism came quickly. “I am shocked,” said U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisc. “I think that the Justice Department has overreached. There’s something seriously wrong with the internal management of the Justice Department, and that better be fixed, because if it isn’t, the support for the internal part of our war against terrorism is going to evaporate rapidly.” On Sunday, Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., called for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, citing the IG findings and the controversial firings of eight U.S. attorneys.
Gonzales has promised reform, hoping to head off any action amending the Patriot Act and cutting back FBI power. FBI Director Robert Mueller acknowledged his failure to supervise use of the letters and vowed to improve accountability.
It’s essential that lawmakers rewrite the Patriot Act’s most intrusive provisions and ensure the FBI abandons its unlawful practices. The bureau clearly saw itself as above the law – a law that was far too loose to begin with.
