FBI Finds It Frequently Overstepped in Collecting Data
By John Solomon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 14, 2007; A01
An internal FBI audit has found that the bureau potentially
violated the law or agency rules more than 1,000 times while collecting data about domestic phone calls, e-mails and financial transactions in recent years, far more than was documented in a Justice Department report in March that ignited bipartisan congressional criticism.
The new audit covers just 10 percent of the bureau's national security investigations since 2002, and so the
mistakes in the FBI's domestic surveillance efforts probably number several thousand, bureau officials said in interviews. The earlier report found 22 violations in a much smaller sampling.
The
vast majority of the new violations were instances in which telephone companies and Internet providers gave agents phone and e-mail records the agents did not request and were not authorized to collect. The agents retained the information anyway in their files, which mostly concerned suspected terrorist or espionage activities.
more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/13/AR2007061302453_pf.htmlFBI Terror Watch List 'Out of Control'
June 13, 2007 8:55 AM
Justin Rood Reports:
A terrorist watch list compiled by the FBI has apparently swelled to include more than half a million names.
............
"It grows seemingly without control or limitation," said ACLU senior legislative counsel Tim Sparapani of the terrorism watch list. Sparapani called the 509,000 figure "stunning.""If we have 509,000 names on that list, the watch list is virtually useless," he told ABC News. "You'll be
capturing innocent individuals with no connection to crime or terror."http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/06/fbi_terror_watc.html