Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
- Juvenal
Who will watch the watchmen?
- Alan Moore's translation
This should be filed under "no surprise, really," but the Washington Post reports on the FBI's continued misuse of "National Security Letters" or NSLs.
From the Post article:
An internal FBI audit has found that the bureau potentially violated the law or agency rules more than 1,000 times while collecting data about domestic phone calls, e-mails and financial transactions in recent years, far more than was documented in a Justice Department report in March that ignited bipartisan congressional criticism.
The new audit covers just 10 percent of the bureau's national security investigations since 2002, and so the mistakes in the FBI's domestic surveillance efforts probably number several thousand, bureau officials said in interviews. The earlier report found 22 violations in a much smaller sampling.
As I said before, no surprises there. When the Justice Department is given a tool usually reserved to absolute monarchs such as Louis XVI (see my earlier post about lettres de cachet and the similarities between the Bush administration and the regime that was deposed in the French Revolution), the chances are good that they're going to abuse it.
Remember, this is why we wrote our Constitution, to protect citizens from such abuse.
The Bush administration's response has been, predictably: "Move along, nothing to see here...." Again, from the article:
The officials said they are making widespread changes to ensure that the problems do not recur. Those changes include implementing a corporate-style, continuous, internal compliance program to review the bureau's policies, procedures and training, to provide regular monitoring of employees' work by supervisors in each office, and to conduct frequent audits to track compliance across the bureau.
. . .
Many of those letters were improperly dispatched by the bureau's Communications Analysis Unit, a central clearinghouse for the analysis of telephone records such as those gathered with the help of "exigent" letters and National Security Letters. Justice Department and FBI investigators are trying to determine if any FBI headquarters officials should be held accountable or punished for those abuses, and have begun advising agents of their due process rights during interviews.
The FBI audit will be completed in the coming weeks, and Congress will be briefed on the results, officials said. FBI officials said each potential violation will then be extensively reviewed by lawyers to determine if it must be reported to the Intelligence Oversight Board, a presidential panel of senior intelligence officials created to safeguard civil liberties.
Oh, well, I feel much better now. See? They're going to police themselves, so everything is fine.
Does nobody else out there remember COINTELPRO and the Church Committee?
"Who watches the watchers" is a valid concern...
But what of the OTHER concerns should so-called "privacy" advocaters get their way??
Let me ask a question..
Is the concern that it is the BUSH Administration who is doing all the watching??
Or is it concern that watching is being done, period?
A very nice poster, formerly of another blog asked me a question regarding TIA and related projects. Unfortuantly, we were not allowed to continue our debate, but he brought up some interesting issues.
After watching a couple of PBS segments, I was left with a feeling of sadness. Specifically with a couple from Las Vegas who were indignant that the FBI would obtain hotel records in an effort to combat a possible impending terrorist attack.. I walked away from that segment with the idea that this couple obviously felt that their personal privacy was more important than safeguarding hundreds of thousands of lives.
This illustrates the fallacy of the Far Left's position.
It is also extremely ironic... The Left wants to know anything, everything and ALL things about what the government is doing and not doing. However, they don't want the government to know about ANYTHING they are doing....
A country such as that, would last exactly 5 mins in the real world before it would be destroyed from within and without.
Michale.....
To answer your question, I am concerned that the watching is being done, period. But I'm more concerned because it's the Bush team doing the watching, I must admit.
But I am MOSTLY concerned with the way it's being done, not that it IS being done.
I don't have a problem with surveillance and counterterrorism per se, what I have a problem with is all the programs which circumvent the Judiciary.
I want a warrant, and I want a judge to approve it, in other words.
The law as it stands even allows for emergency warrants or tapping phones or other surveillance, as long as the FBI (or whoever) goes back and touches second base (i.e., gets a warrant from the FISA court) later on, after the fact.
As you can probably tell, I am as absolutist on the Fourth Amendment as the NRA is on the Second. Getting a judge to approve this stuff is one of the fundamentals in the Bill of Rights, and I don't want to give that right away to anybody -- be it Bush with his NSLs or Clinton with his "clipper chips" in everyone's computer.
-CW
I, too, don't have a problem with making the Administration (ANY Administration) go back and "touch second". And I fully agree with you that an administration must comply with the law, either before the fact or, if necessity requires it, after the fact.
There MUST be accountability, I agree with you 1000% on that...
Michale.....