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FBI Violations May Number 3,000, Official Says 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." His account evoked heated criticism of the bureau from Republicans and Democrats alike, including a comment from Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) that it "sounds like a report about a first- or second-grade class."....
Lawmakers warn FBI it could lose broad spying power following disclosures of abuses 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 after revelations of widespread abuses of the authority detailed in a recent internal U.S. investigation. Their threats came as the Justice Department's chief watchdog, Glenn A. Fine, told a House of Representatives panel that the Federal Bureau of Investigation 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 does not 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, a Republican and a supporter of the power, referring to the data requests by their initials. "From the attorney general on down, you should be ashamed of yourself," said Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican. "We stretched to try to give you the tools necessary to make America safe, and it is very, very clear that you've abused that trust." If Congress revokes some of the expansive law enforcement powers it granted in the USA Patriot Act in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, Issa said, "America may be less safe, but the Constitution will be more secure, and it will be because of your failure to deal with this in a serious fashion."....
Senate Bill Would Mandate Disclosure of Data Mining The Justice Department is opposing bipartisan Senate legislation that would require federal agencies to disclose to Congress data-mining programs they use to find patterns of criminal or terrorist activity, saying that it duplicates a reporting requirement mandated in the 2006 renewal of the USA Patriot Act. The department, however, missed the March 9 deadline to report on its data-mining programs as required by the law. Senate Democrats, who have pressed for disclosure to ensure that privacy and civil liberties were not violated, are not pleased. "This is more stonewalling by the administration to avoid congressional oversight," said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who co-sponsored the data-mining provision with Sens. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) and John E. Sununu (R-N.H.). "We specifically placed sunshine provisions in the Patriot Act reauthorization to ensure some reasonable checks on the department's data-mining activities that affect millions of Americans," Leahy said. The 2006 Patriot Act mandated a one-time report on Justice data-mining initiatives. The Senate proposal would establish a yearly reporting requirement for all federal agencies. A Justice Department inspector general's report revealed recently that the FBI improperly gathered telephone and financial records of U.S. residents using administrative subpoenas called national security letters, and in some cases merely by citing "exigent circumstances." The report, released two weeks ago, was mandated in the reauthorized Patriot Act over the Bush administration's objections. The report also found that the FBI "significantly understated" to Congress the number of national security letters it had issued. In January, Leahy asked Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales whether the Justice Department would produce a report on its data-mining activities. He received no reply....
Why data retention legislation would do more harm than good Do you remember every Web site you visited, every email you sent, and every word you Googled during the last two years? Probably not, but your Internet service provider might—especially if a proposal currently popular in Washington becomes law. In September, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales called for a law to force Internet service providers (ISPs) to store customer information for one to two years. Rep. Dianne DeGette, D-Colo., plans to introduce such a “data retention” bill this coming spring. Mandated data retention, as proposed by Gonzales and DeGette, would be extremely costly for Internet providers and their customers and would severely harm individual privacy rights—without doing any good. Advocates of mandated data retention argue that it would aid the prosecution of child pornographers, that tracking every step a pedophile makes online is vital to achieve a conviction. Thus, they want all ISPs, search engines, and social networking sites to store their users’ IP addresses. Moreover, some suggest also tracking the identities of e-mail correspondents and recipients of instant messages. DeGette once even suggested making this information available not only to the police but also to civil litigants. Requiring the tracking and storing of every move of every Internet user would impose enormous costs on Internet service providers. Those costs would hurt prospering high tech companies and their employees, as consumers would turn away from online transactions and communications because they would consider them less secure. Meanwhile, consumers would be hurt by seeing their online options limited. In addition to economic harm, governmentally mandated data retention poses serious threats to individual privacy rights....
Conservatives Launch Effort to Rollback Presidential Abuse of Power The Liberty Coalition, a transpartisan public policy group dedicated to preserving the Bill of Rights, personal autonomy and individual privacy, applauds yesterday's launch of the American Freedom Agenda (AFA). A cooperative effort of deeply respected conservative leaders Bruce Fein, Bob Barr, David Keene and Richard Viguery, AFA's mission is to enact legislation that restores "the Constitution's checks and balances" and makes the subject "a staple of political campaigns and of foremost concern to Members of Congress and to voters and educators." At an event at the National Press Club, AFA unveiled a ten point agenda to roll back an accumulation of presidential and executive power that they argue has come at the expense of the legislative and judiciary branches of government. While Presidents have consistently overstepped their constitutional authority since the beginning of the 20th century, AFA asserts that abuse of executive power has exploded since 9/11. In the coming days, AFA will release draft legislation to: -- End the use of military commissions to prosecute crimes. -- Prohibit the use of secret evidence or evidence obtained by torture. -- Prohibit the detention of American citizens as enemy combatants without proof. -- Restore habeas corpus for alleged alien combatants. -- End National Security Agency warrentless wiretapping. -- Empower Congress to challenge presidential signing statements. -- Bar executive use of the state secret privilege to deny justice. -- Prohibit the President from collaborating with foreign governments to kidnap, detain of torture persons abroad. -- Amend the Espionage Act to permit journalists to report on classified national security matters without threat of persecution. -- Prohibit of the labeling of groups or individuals in the U.S. as global terrorists based on secret evidence....
Gunfight at D.C. Corral When Blackstone described the right to carry arms as part of the natural right of "self-preservation," he could not have envisioned the situation of a professional woman coming home late to an empty Washington, D.C., apartment. Yet in a city declared by its police chief to be in a state of "crime emergency" last summer, where being followed home from Metro stops is a not uncommon experience for female residents, where, according to FBI statistics, 3,577 burglaries were reported in 2005, and where even nonlethal Taser guns are a prohibited means of self-defense, Blackstone's description rings powerfully true. It is not surprising, then, that the most recent shots in the jurisprudential struggle over the Second Amendment have been fired here in "gun-free" Washington. On March 9, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decided Parker v. District of Columbia, in which the plaintiffs challenged three D.C. gun laws that together effectively prohibit private ownership of handguns in the nation's capital. The first disputed provision bars registration of handguns. The second forbids "carrying" a pistol, even inside one's home. The third requires that pistols be kept unloaded and disassembled, or bound by a trigger lock at all times. All prevent an individual from lawfully defending his or her home against an intruder. In an opinion by Senior Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman, over a dissent by Judge Karen Henderson, the panel struck down the provisions as violating the Second Amendment. In sharp contrast to the bloated Supreme Court jurisprudence growing out of most other amendments, though, the High Court has been nearly silent on the proper interpretation of the Second. The Court's most thorough construction of the provision, in the 1939 case United States v. Miller, did not turn on whether the amendment applies to individual citizens, but on whether a short- barreled shotgun qualifies as a protected "arm." In the absence of Supreme Court guidance, a majority of federal appellate courts have adopted the collective rights model. Most recently, in the 2002 Silveira case, the Ninth Circuit held that "bear arms" refers only to carrying weapons in military service and, thus, the Second Amendment protects only collective rights. Prior to the recent Parker decision, the only federal circuit adopting the individual rights approach was the Fifth Circuit in United States v. Emerson in 2001 (a case discussed by Nelson Lund in this magazine before the decision came down, "Taking the Second Amendment Seriously," July 24, 2000). State appellate courts are likewise divided: Courts in seven states have held for an individual rights interpretation (Colorado, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, Tennessee, Washington, and West Virginia), while ten others have adopted the collective rights theory (Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Utah, and Illinois)....
Border Agents Under Fire at Rio Grande Two Border Patrol agents investigating bundles of marijuana left along the Rio Grande exchanged gunfire with unseen assailants shooting from the Mexican side of the river, officials said. The agents were unharmed Tuesday, and no one was believed injured on the Mexican side, Customs and Border Protection spokesman Oscar Saldana said. It was the second time this year agents were fired at near that section of the river, which is less than 150 feet wide at that point. The agents had spotted an inflatable raft near the U.S. side of the river near Donna, a small town near the southern tip of Texas, and found four bundles of marijuana totaling 305 pounds on the river bank, Saldana said. "They went in to take a closer look. At that time the agents came under fire," Saldana said. "They immediately took cover and responded by firing as well." The raft, carrying more marijuana, apparently returned to the Mexican shore....
Mich. man's charity mower ride derailed for lack of registration A Michigan man's effort to drive around he country on a lawnmower to raise money for charity might have been cut short by a police officer who said his vehicle needed to be registered to be used on public roads. Louis Ransom, also known as ''Travlndude,'' of Fife Lake, Mich., stopped in Montpelier on Friday hoping to meet the governor when he was stopped by Montpelier Officer Jim Pontbriand. ''Vehicles that travel on our highways are required to be registered and to have a plate,'' Pontbriand said. Ransom said he'd researched the registration requirements for each state. He said he thought that ''as long as I had a slow-moving vehicle sign I would be OK, but my research must not have been thorough enough.'' Ransom's vehicle was escorted to a state parking lot. Ransom said he was committed to continuing his drive. He is raising money for the Children's Miracle Network and Shriner's Hospitals For Children....