EFF: FBI may have committed more than 40K intelligence violations since 9/11

A new report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation analyzes more than 2,500 pages' worth of FBI documents extracted using Freedom of Information Act litigation and finds disturbing, system-wide violations of civil liberties on a scale that is far beyond anything reported to date:

Using documents obtained through EFF's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation, the report finds:
• Evidence of delays of 2.5 years, on average, between the occurrence of a violation and its eventual reporting to the Intelligence Oversight Board
• Reports of serious misconduct by FBI agents including lying in declarations to courts, using improper evidence to obtain grand jury subpoenas, and accessing password-protected files without a warrant
• Indications that the FBI may have committed upwards of 40,000 possible intelligence violations in the 9 years since 9/11

Release: EFF Uncovers Widespread FBI Intelligence Violations

Report: Patterns of Misconduct: FBI Intelligence Violations from 2001 - 2008

(Image: FBI, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from groovysoup's photostream)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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The Snowden Principle

Anonymous

So, it was really Fraud, Bullying, Intimidation all the time huh. I thought that era ended with Hoover. Stupid of me. The general integrity of politicians has steadily declined since the sixties, so logically their selected operators should follow.
jjsaul

I think the only thing that would trigger more general pushback against the surveillance state would be a sense of personal violation… what if a wikileaks-style release of information just assembled a DB where we could all look up our names and find out how many phone calls, emails, and pages of data has been collected in our profile? Not the content, for privacy’s sake, just the volume. OI guess it would really take release of the content for serious pushback.
Cowicide

Only 40K ?
Anonymous

The question remains, the big fat elephant staring at us: What are we going to do about it?
- Anonymous
  
  We will feel mildly to moderately irate for a few minutes, then after a bit more browsing, we’ll forget all about it and do something else until the next story about abuse of our civil liberties and privacy rights. Rinse. Lather. Repeat.
egoVirus

Ladies and gentleman, further evidence that you’re living in a police state. Get out now!
Anonymous

“(Y)ou’ve got extraordinarily talented people who are working very hard to keep Americans safe. I don’t want them to suddenly feel like they’ve got to spend all their time looking over their shoulders and lawyering up.”

“My general belief is that when it comes to national security, what we have to focus on is getting things right in the future as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past.”

Bush or Obama?
- travtastic
  
  Politician lacking morals. No need to specify at this point.
Lobster

These sound more like civil liberties violations to me. An intelligence violation is when someone does something stupid. :D
technogeek

Ya authorize sloppy shortcuts, ya get sloppy shortcuts.

I say again: The terrorists made us stupid. By doing so, they _won_.
ncm

This sort of story would read very differently if the headline was, “EFF: FBI agents may have committed more than 40K intelligence violations since 9/11. The FBI may be above the law, but FBI agents aren’t, formally. An FBI agent (or police officer, or TSA drone) acting beyond his or her lawful authority is no different from any other criminal. By my lights their punishment should be more swift and sure than anybody’s.
rebdav

Nobody will stand up until like Egypt they are a few paychecks behind on their food bill, angry and hungry, when they have nothing to loose. In the US a pacified generation is still desperately trying to make house and car payments and can’t be bothered by silly concepts like freedom or privacy that brave people once fought and died for.
spincycle

In the wake of 9/11, many of us – and important groups like the ACLU, EFF, etc. – warned that giving too much ground on privacy and civil liberties would inevitably lead to abuses.

We were told that we were unpatriotic, paranoid, pinkos/atheists/liberals/assholes/whatever.

In the years since, we’ve seen abuse after abuse, piling upon one another so quickly that we scarcely get a chance to digest one before another two are piled on. As a result, people either don’t know about these events or believe that they’re minor, irregular, or intermittent. The evidence shows that they’re systemic and common.
urbanhick

Imagine my (complete lack of) surprise!
entheo

egoVirus – where you do recommend for people to get out to? Don’t most places have problems similar, but not the same as the US?
Zergonapal

Fortunately Games Workshop recently released a FAQ that corrected a lot of problems with the offshoot Space Marine chapters, so its ok now.
Anonymous

Who will prosecute the F.B.I?
They are a bunch of scumbags with badges. ABOVE THE LAW!
taj1f

The system has always been broken on both ends and in the middle. Now it’s simply obvious.

Very thankful to the good folks at the EFF for uncovering the truth. Mulder would be so proud.