Think the Bush administration has stopped spying on Americans? Well, you’re wrong. [Washington Post]
FBI director Robert Mueller told Congress yesterday that “the FBI improperly used national security letters in 2006 to obtain personal data on Americans during terror and spy investigations.”
A reminder: National Security Letters are letters sent by the FBI, without a warrant, to demand “personal data on people from banks, telephone and Internet providers and credit bureaus without official authorization.”
They’re supposed to only be used in an emergency, but an independent audit by the inspector general found that they’d been used carelessly and in non-emergency circumstances at least from 2003-2005. [Washington Post]
Mueller claims the practice has stopped, citing reforms passed in 2007, but there’s reason to be skeptical.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VM) says, “Everybody wants to stop terrorists. But we also, though, as Americans, we believe in our privacy rights and we want those protected… There has to be a better chain of command for this. You cannot just have an FBI agent who decides he’d like to obtain Americans’ records, bank records or anything else and do it just because they want to.”
Another Department of Justice inspector general report is due in the next week, which will reveal whether the abuse has continued despite the reforms. Stay tuned! [Raw Story]
The Bush administration had better butt out of our newsfeed.
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