Electronic Frontier Foundation Uncovers Widespread FBI Intelligence Violations

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/01/eff-releases-report-detailing-fbi-intelligence

by randomwalker • 15 years ago

213 41 15 years ago

raintrees• 15 years ago

Just as a humorous aside, my wife and I both chuckled when I read the headline aloud stating that the FBI had violated intelligence...

dsplittgerber• 15 years ago

The EFF needs a more professional copy-writer.

ck2• 15 years ago

They can get away with all this and more because we have been made to believe it's okay to be in a state of war for a decade now, because everyone can still go shopping at the mall.

"Homeland Security" has become such a huge industry, how will we ever get them to scale it back down and give up all their little ways to violate the people they are supposed to protect?

lotusleaf1987• 15 years ago

That's exactly why I support having a draft. If everyone of military age had to worry about being drafted, we'd be much less likely to go to war. As it is, the burden of war falls on the backs of the poor and uneducated because it's the best job opportunity they have.

russell2• 15 years ago

Wishful thinking. Having the draft did not keep us out of Vietnam (or the escalation). Eighteen yearolds have no influence on military policy and their parents buy the patriotic fervor. I am thankful that we dont have the draft and my son did not have to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan. I wish it were more difficult to wage war, not easier.

dantheman2• 15 years ago

The draft is one of the most evil things that the united states government has ever done. Slavery is evil in all its forms, and conscripted armies are an especially heinous form.

Duff3• 15 years ago

I guess the logic of this position is that if the suburban soccer mom's were forced to send their sons and daughters to war, they would do something about it. Or that as a nation we would somehow be more sensible since we would all know someone who may be sent overseas.

Maybe so, but traditionally conscription has been all about maximizing manpower to fight a protracted war, and isn't a concept that is typically associated with pacifism.

jdp23• 15 years ago

We'll get them to back down when everybody stands up and demands their rights. As I said in another thread, now is a a good time to rethink Hacker News' bias against discussions of civil liberties. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2159003

jackfoxy• 15 years ago

“War is the father of all things”, so said Heraclitus, and it’s true of modern America in particular. It has not been a good thing for those who cherish Liberty above all else. It has been a good thing for people who believe government can be a force for good (for the federal government would not have the power, without war). Before the Civil War the standing U.S. Army consisted of 3 regiments. Even in those days that was a tiny army. At its largest the Navy had about 40 significant warships, many of which would be in reserve (mothballs) at any given time. This was the design of the founding fathers, who considered a large standing military a threat to the people’s liberty and a tool of despots.

The Civil War changed everything. Fighting the war required a huge modern Federal Army and Navy. Men got used to the idea of serving in the standing military (instead of militia service). Occupying the southern states after the war required a larger standing army. The experience of Imperial France occupying Mexico during the Civil War made leaders rethink the old militia system (militias had not done so well fighting a professional army in the War of 1812). And with the final great push of settlers westward, the larger professional army was useful in suppressing the Indians, which had largely been conducted by state and territorial militias before the War.

America in the latter half of the 19th century became a culture accustomed to militarism. The federal government, growing more rapidly in the aftermath of the war for many reasons, found the bureaucratic disciplines of a military carry over well to other government services.

WWI required not only a rapid military build-up, but for the first time in our history the federal government directing industrial production. That was a new genie let out of the bottle. WWII more of the same within one generation; Cold War immediately following introduces continuing state of war that doesn’t much affect our lifestyle; Korea, the first major shooting war without an explicit declaration of war by Congress; Viet Nam, more of the same – and all the time ever-larger Leviathan finds new areas it can intervene in society (not passing judgment here, just saying).

hugh32• 15 years ago

The point is they can't get away with this. The violations which are in the report are violations which have been detected and investigated and reported to the oversight board. Presumably the agents involved were disciplined in most cases.

The FBI, like any other police force, no doubt has its share of officers who do the wrong thing from time to time. But if the actual numbers are eight hundred violations over ten years among the thirty thousand employees of the FBI, then... well, that doesn't seem all that bad to me.

Duff3• 15 years ago

The average duration between incident and report of the incident is 2.5 YEARS. That's a long time, long enough to make effective investigation difficult -- memories fade, evidence goes stale or missing. EFF estimates that there are as many as 40,000 violations.

You also need to ask: what prompts the report of a routine activity in an investigation 30 months after the activity takes place?

Most scary to me:

"almost one-fifth involved an FBI violation of the Constitution, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or other laws governing criminal investigations or intelligence gathering activities"

"From 2001 to 2008, the FBI engaged in a number of flagrant legal violations, including: submitting false or inaccurate declarations to courts, using improper evidence to obtain federal grand jury subpoena, accessing password protected documents without a warrant"

These are serious issues -- this isn't like the local police getting free lunch or looking the other way. You're talking about an FBI agent lying to a grand jury or a Federal judge. Both are serious felonies. Another thing that is disturbing is that it looks like the FBI isn't following its own procedures internally. So the people who are supposedly running the agency have no clue what is happening.

I'm not trying to say that the FBI is like the KGB or is inherently evil. I'd be willing to bet that 98% of the people working there have the best of intentions. But you have a situation where these good people are in highly compartmentalized, secretive units within this massive bureaucracy with this important mission. The middle management is driven to deliver results, but not accountable for their actions.

That combination of mission, drive and unaccountability is a recipe for systematic abuses of power.

MichaelGG• 15 years ago

Where did you get the 800 over 10 years? The page says indications of upwards of 40,000 in 9 years.

Given this, why should we presume there is proper discipline?

jim_h• 15 years ago

I definitely agree that it's become a 'huge industry'. There are people getting huge payments for selling (and accepting) and even more people getting jobs. Of those involved, who's going to say no to that?

I was surprised that they went the airport scanner route since it'll reduce jobs. However, I suppose they've paving the way for more passive invasive technology to be sold and used in more common areas. Profits from hardware, installation, maintenance contracts and training are probably bigger than what exists now.

jamesbressi• 15 years ago

What implications does this have for those who may have been convicted of a felony based on those 40,000 violations?

Scary thought that chances are... of those truly guilty and convicted, there's at least one or a few who committed a heinous crime and could now walk from illegal/improper police work. That's just as scary as violating other's rights and wrongful convictions.

Another loss for liberty and safety.

dstorrs• 15 years ago

> [criminals going free is] just as scary as violating other's rights and wrongful convictions.

I disagree. There will always be evil in the world; one criminal more or less is a drop in the bucket. What truly hurts a nation is when innocent citizens cannot be sure that their innocence will protect them from their own legal system.

nik61• 15 years ago

From the UK as at 21:25 GMT the EFF site seems to have completely disappeared...

westbywest• 15 years ago

Also seeing this. Getting "connection reset" errors over HTTP and HTTPS.

johngalt• 15 years ago

Ever since CALEA it should have been obvious to anyone where we were headed. Only-the-fly remote monitoring capability in of all major telecoms, that the feds can turn on surreptitiously? Right, I'm sure they will only use it when they've filled out all the proper forms.

teepark• 15 years ago

creepy that it's down now.

cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ZDGnKBh...

ecto• 15 years ago

I've never seen the EFF down. Smells fishy to me. I hope it's not a case of foul play though and just massive traffic.

pmorici• 15 years ago

Direct link to the actual PDF report; https://www.eff.org/files/EFF%20IOB%20Report_Final%20Version...

GHFigs4• 15 years ago

Take with a grain of salt. The "40,000" figure the EFF mentions is entirely their own. The number of potential violations actually described in the documents they have is 768.

Is it reasonable to assume that the actual number is 50 times higher? Please decide for yourself instead of just taking the EFF's word for it.

Also, when considering the scope and scale of these violations, recognize that little distinction is being made between simple violations of procedure and scandalous invasions of individual privacy. If you feel that violations of Constitutional rights are more significant than missed administrative deadlines, this is an important distinction, one that the EFF's "Big Number" only serves to obscure. In fact their own report states that the number of violations involving "violation of the Constitution, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or other laws governing criminal investigations or intelligence gathering activities" is "almost one-fifth" of the already much-deflated total.

omouse• 15 years ago

Whether the number is 40 000 or 768 is irrelevant, even ONE violation should be too much and should be investigated and treated seriously.

GHFigs4• 15 years ago

The documents the EFF obtained are from those investigations.

Duff3• 15 years ago

The EFF report talks about how they got to 40,000 on page 12. That estimate makes several assumptions whose validity is tough to validate. I agree that it is probably inflated.

The 768 number is based on one release of documents, which only lists reported incidents. The FBI Inspector General estimated 6,400 violations between 2003 and 2006 based on a statistical sample.

Say the actual number is alot lower -- 10,000 for the period from 2001 to present. That would mean that like 98% of NSLs (about 40,000 are issued annually) were proper and consistent with the rules. But that 2% still means that there was probably 2,000 incidents where serious violations of constitutional rights were committed by people sworn to protect and defend the constitution.

GHFigs4• 15 years ago

I'm not clear on why your made-up number is better than their made-up number, but I agree that even a smaller number of that third category is too many.

Specifically, I'm hesitant to assume that the proportions of the EFF's sample are representative or that they 'scale up' to the number reported by the Inspector General and beyond. The main reason being while the EFF's sample is specific to violations recognized and reported as such, the Inspector General's report is specific to NSLs and not specific to things initially recognized as violations. The later report cites such comparatively minor violations as typos which are likely to be under-represented in the IOB documents, where more serious (and obvious) violations likely over-represented.

That is to say: there may be several thousand additional violations, but the proportion of them which are of the (arguably) more benign classes of clerical mistakes and "overproduction" may be much higher than in the EFF's sample. I think that 20% is very unlikely to be reflective of the (unknown) whole and I think the findings in the Inspector General's report[1] support that.

[1] http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/s0803b/final.pdf

Bud• 15 years ago

I think I'd much sooner take EFF's word than the FBI's word. The FBI, most especially under GWB, lies for a living. EFF tells the truth for a living.

I think we can all agree there was rampant, epidemic lawbreaking in the Bush Administration, though, and that it appears to be continuing under Obama. Massaging the exact number smacks of an effort to distract.

acabal• 15 years ago

Am I just being cynical or am I the only one completely unsurprised by this?

daniel-cussen• 15 years ago

While this is definitely news, it's hardly a surprise.

Electronic Frontier Foundation Uncovers Widespread FBI Intelligence Violations

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