Stop FBI Abuse

From the San Jose Mercury News:

Critics predicted it: Without tight supervision, the federal government would ignore limits of the law to invade people's privacy.

Friday, the inspector general of the FBI reported that the agency had abused its authority, under the USA Patriot Act, to get the financial, Internet and telephone records of thousands of Americans. Now that the predictions proved true, Congress must take back the unchecked authority it gave the Justice Department in 2001.

Before Sept. 11, the federal government had very limited power to obtain personal records without a court order of suspects in espionage and foreign terrorism cases. In the Patriot Act, Congress greatly lowered the threshold to cover anyone deemed relevant to an investigation.

The federal government had ample tools to investigate terrorism. The report documented why eliminating a court order was a bad idea. In 2005 alone, the FBI issued 19,000 requests to Internet providers, banks and phone companies for records of Web sites visited, calls made and checks cashed. In hundreds of cases, the FBI agents didn't go through the formality of seeking administrative subpoenas with supervisory approvals. The FBI cited emergency circumstances but then didn't provide documentation after the fact.

The agency sharply underreported to Congress how often it used its authority, and it failed to monitor and protect the privacy of the records.

The rest