Report: FBI abuse of investigative tool continued in 2006
Story Highlights
Report says FBI issued national security letters without proper authorization
Justice official says significant improvements started in 2007
NSLs are requests for companies to hand over person's records without court order
FBI slammed last year for how it used NSLs, failing to protect civil liberties Next Article in Politics »
From Terry FriedenCNN WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The FBI continued in 2006 to badly mishandle letters that it uses to obtain personal records without a court order, according to a Justice Department report released Thursday.
FBI Director Robert Mueller testifes about oversight before a Senate committee last week.
The new report cites "issuance of NSLs [national security letters] without proper authorization, improper requests and unauthorized collection of telephone or Internet e-mail records due to FBI errors or mistakes made by NSL recipients."
But a top department official said significant progress has been made in the past year toward correcting those errors.
Inspector General Glenn Fine said it's too soon to tell if the problems will be eliminated.
Thursday's report came a year after Fine's first report on national security letters, which the FBI issues to third parties to get information on individuals -- such as telephone, e-mail and financial records -- in connection with terrorism or spy investigations.
The original report, which covered 2004 and 2005, found serious systematic failures by the bureau in its use of the letters.
Fine said it is no surprise that the latest report found continued violations in 2006, since that was before he issued last year's stinging appraisal.
"The FBI and DOJ [Department of Justice] have made significant progress in implementing the recommendations contained in our first report and in adopting additional corrective measures to address the serious problems," Fine said.
"However, several of the FBI's and the department's corrective measures are not yet fully implemented and it is too early to determine whether these measures will eliminate the problems with the use of these authorities," he said.
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The Justice Department and FBI were quick to latch onto Fine's comments and praise the FBI for doing a much better job, but Democratic lawmakers were just as fast to pounce on the report as evidence of continued FBI failings.
"We are pleased with the Office of Inspector General's positive assessment of the many actions taken by the Justice Department and FBI to improve oversight of the use of national security letters," said spokesman Dean Boyd of the Justice Department's National Security Division.
"Despite the low error rate we continue to strive for zero errors and we believe that the measures we have put in place will help ensure that," an FBI statement said.
But Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, promised to hold a hearing on the issue. The report, he said, "outlines more abuses and what appears to be the improper use of national security letters for years in a systemic failure throughout the FBI."
And House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Michigan, said, "At the same time the administration is trying to intimidate the Congress into giving it additional spying power, we find out yet again that it has abused its authority to pry into the lives of law-abiding Americans."
The new report shows the FBI continued in 2006 to increase its use of the secret letters. The 49,425 requests represented a 4.7 percent increase over 2005.
In an accompanying report the inspector general said the FBI made 47 requests to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for warrants to pursue business records. All requests were approved.
The report, however, singled out one classified case in which the FBI was turned down by the FISA court, and pursued the matter anyway. Although the details were blacked out in the report, the inspector general said Congress was provided a classified version of the report, which contains the information. E-mail to a friend
All About Federal Bureau of Investigation • U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/13/fbi.nsl/index.html
