The Justice Department's Inspector General published a report (PDF) today on the FBI's continued abuse of National Security Letters. However the IG postponed reporting on the abuse of "blanket" NSLs. We learned about the existence of these only today from the NY Times. They're an example of how the Bush "administration" actually employs retroactive immunity to shield its own lawbreaking.
In 2006 the FBI, having issued truckloads of warrantless NSLs illegally, decided it needed a way to make all of them legal retroactively. So it did what any agency would do under this "administration" - it waved the magic wand handed over to it by Congress, and presto! The FBI simply issued "blanket" NSLs to each of the telecoms in question to justify after the fact all the records it had previously scooped up.
Senior officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation repeatedly approved the use of "blanket" records demands to justify the improper collection of thousands of phone records, according to officials briefed on the practice...
By 2006, F.B.I. officials began learning that the bureau had issued thousands of "exigent" or emergency records demands to phone providers in situations where no life-threatening emergency existed, according to the account of Mr. Youssef, who worked with the phone companies in collecting records in terrorism investigations. In these situations, the F.B.I. had promised the private companies that the emergency records demands would be followed up with formal subpoenas or properly processed letters, but often, the follow-up material never came.
This created a backlog of records that the F.B.I. had obtained without going through proper procedures. In response, the letter said, the F.B.I. devised a plan: rather than issuing national security letters retroactively for each individual investigation, it would issue the blanket letters to cover all the records obtained from a particular phone company.
So there was no effective oversight of the use of warrantless NSLs. Nor were there any objections to the FBI granting itself blanket retroactive immunity for breaking even the nominal restrictions that Congress imposed on NSLs in the Patriot Act. In fact, the NYT quotes an FBI official saying that these blanket grants were "pure of heart" even if, you know, illegal.
Notice that this story confirms again what Kagro X has been saying: Every day of delay during the FISA debate brings further revelations about how the Bush "administration" abuses any surveillance power it's granted.
On March 5, FBI Director Robert Mueller testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the Inspector General's investigation into NSL abuse during 2006. He led the Senate to believe that the IG would find nothing more than a continuation of the abuses that already had been exposed for the years 2003 to 2005.
The new audit, which examines use of national security letters issued in 2006, "will identify issues similar to those in the report issued last March," Mueller told senators. The privacy abuse "predates the reforms we now have in place," he said.
"We are committed to ensuring that we not only get this right, but maintain the vital trust of the American people," Mueller said. He offered no additional details about the upcoming audit...
Several Justice Department and FBI officials familiar with the upcoming 2006 findings have said privately the new audit will show national security letters were used incorrectly at a similar rate as during the previous three years.
Funny, we heard nothing at all back then about "blanket" NSLs, either from Mueller or from those anonymous FBI officials who were being so helpful to reporters. Yet today, this scandal just emerges out of the blue...and only because it was revealed by the lawyer for an FBI whistleblower, Bassem Youssef. How many more of the Bush "administration's" secret abuses of surveillance powers remain to be exposed?