By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer
March 5, 2008
WASHINGTON - The FBI improperly used national security letters
in 2006 to obtain personal data on Americans during terror
and spy investigations, Director Robert Mueller said Wednesday.
Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the privacy
breach by FBI agents and lawyers occurred a year before the
bureau enacted sweeping new reforms to prevent future lapses.
Details on the abuses will be outlined in the coming days
in a report by the Justice Department's inspector general.
The report is a follow-up to an audit by the inspector general
a year ago that found the FBI demanded personal data on people
from banks, telephone and Internet providers and credit bureaus
without official authorization and in non-emergency circumstances
between 2003 and 2005.
Mueller, noting senators' concerns about Americans' civil
and privacy rights, said the new report "will identify
issues similar to those in the report issued last March." The
similarities, he said, are because the time period of the two
studies "predates the reforms we now have in place."
He added: "We are committed to ensuring that we not only
get this right, but maintain the vital trust of the American
people."
Mueller offered no additional details. Several other Justice
Department and FBI officials familiar with this year's findings
have said privately the upcoming report will show the letters
were wrongly used at a similar rate as during the previous
three years.
In contrast to the outrage by Congress and civil liberties
groups after last year's report was issued, Mueller's disclosure
drew no criticism from senators during just over two hours
of testimony during Wednesday's hearing.
Speaking before the FBI chief, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick
Leahy, D-Vt., urged Mueller to be more vigilant in correcting
what he called "widespread illegal and improper use of
national security letters."
"Everybody wants to stop terrorists. But we also, though,
as Americans, we believe in our privacy rights and we want
those protected," Leahy said. "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."
National security letters, as outlined in the USA Patriot
Act, are administrative subpoenas used in suspected terrorism
and espionage cases. They allow the FBI to require telephone
companies, Internet service providers, banks, credit bureaus
and other businesses to produce highly personal records about
their customers or subscribers without a judge's approval.
The number of national security letters issued by the FBI
skyrocketed in the years after the Patriot Act became law in
2001, according to last year's report by Justice Department
Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. His review is required by
Congress, over the objections of the Bush administration.
Former FBI agent Michael German, now a national security adviser
for the American Civil Liberties Union, said Mueller's admission
that the bureau violated laws for the fourth year in a row
underscores the need to have a judge sign off on the subpoenas.
"The credibility factor shows there needs to be outside
oversight," German said after the hearing.
German also cast doubt on FBI reforms to prevent future abuses. "There
were guidelines before, and there were laws before, and the
FBI violated those laws," he said. "And the idea
that new guidelines would make a difference, I think cuts against
rationality."
Fine's earlier report, issued March 9, 2007, blamed agent
error and shoddy record-keeping for the bulk of the problems
and did not find any indication of criminal misconduct.
It uncovered thousands of examples of the FBI's failure to
properly report the number of national security letters as
required by law. The 2007 report also identified instances
where agents did not get proper authorization or made otherwise
improper requests for information from telephone companies
and Internet service providers.
In 2005, for example, Fine's office found more than 1,000
violations within 19,000 FBI requests to obtain 47,000 records.
Each letter issued may contain several requests. Justice Department
and FBI auditors said last summer that many of the abuses were
caused by companies that gave more information than the FBI
sought.
The FBI and Justice Department have since enacted guidelines
and sternly reminded FBI agents to carefully follow the rules
governing the national security letters. They caution agents
to review all data before it is transferred into FBI databases
to make sure that only the information specifically requested
is used.
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