We're the Government! We're here to help!

When you hear that statement, you should have only one response - RUN Forest RUN!

This site tends to stray away from politics and ride that razors edge of meaningless fluff and monkey-fluffery -- however this note raised my blood pressure a tad - so here it is. Who is doing the spying? Our own government.



========================================================================
[1] Inspector General Discloses National Security Letter Misuse
========================================================================

On March 9, 2007, the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector
General (OIG) issued a report on the FBI's use of the National Security
Letter (NSL) authority. National Security Letters represent an
extraordinary search procedure that permits the FBI to compel the
disclosure of records held by banks, telephone companies, and others
without judicial oversight. Recipients of these requests are forbidden
to reveal that they have received the request. NSLs have existed since
1986, but the Patriot Act's section 505 expanded the scope of whose
records could be reached with an NSL as well as the number of personnel
at the FBI that could issue them. NSL requests grew from an average of
8,500 a year to 40,000 in 2003, 56,000 in 2004, and 47,000 in 2005.

The FBI is required to report to Congress on the number of NSLs issued;
the OIG found that the FBI underreported this number. The OIG review
looked at 77 case files containing 293 NSLs out of a population of
140,000 during the 2003-2005 period. This review found that there were
17% more NSLs in the sample of case files than in FBI reporting
databases. Delays in data entry also caused about 4,600 NSLs to not be
reported to Congress. The OIG concluded that the FBI database
significantly understates the number of NSL requests issued, and that
Congress has been misinformed about the scale of the usage of the NSL
authority.

The report also found significant violations of law and regulations.
Violations are supposed to be self-reported by the FBI to the
Intelligence Oversight Board. During the 3-year period in question, the
FBI self-reported 26 violations out of the 140,000 NSLs issued. The OIG
found 22 potential violations out of the sample of 293 NSLs it reviewed.
This indicates that large amounts of violations are not being
self-reported, as the OIG found that 22 percent of the files it
investigated contained possible violations.

The OIG also found over 700 "exigent letters," which are not authorized
by statute and some of which appear to have been issued when no exigency
or emergency existed. These letters requested records from telephone
companies and promised that proper subpoenas had been submitted or would
follow. However the OIG found no confirmation that subpoenas, National
Security Letters, or other proper process did follow or had in fact been
submitted. In 2005, EPIC uncovered documents concerning National
Security Letters that revealed violations of law reported to the
Intelligence Oversight Board.

Office of the Inspector General's Report (pdf):

http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/s0703b/final.pdf