FISA: FBI Overrides Constitutional Objections

By: emptywheel Friday March 14, 2008 8:58 am

Democrats just defeated (with 217 votes) an effort by Republicans to consider the Senate FISA bill before the House considers the House bill today.

While we're watching lots of bloviating on FISA in the House, I thought I'd call attention to something Mary found yesterday.

The FBI twice disregarded a secret court's constitutional objections and obtained private records for national-security probes, a U.S. inspector reported on Thursday.

The Justice Department's Inspector General made the disclosure in reviews of the FBI's powers to obtain information such as phone records or credit-card data in terrorism probes or other security investigations.

[snip]

The report took particular note of two occasions in which a secret court that oversees electronic surveillance rejected FBI requests to obtain records.

The court was concerned that doing so could interfere with rights protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution which guarantees freedom of speech, religion and association and the right to petition the government.

After the rejections, the FBI used separate authority to get the information without the court's approval, relying on so-called National Security Letters -- even though that authority also had First Amendment guidelines.

Unfortunately, this is a detail I've only seen highlighted in Reuters' coverage of the IG report on PATRIOT Act provisions. It's an example that really proves the necessity of the additional protections included in the House bill--without FISC reviewing what DOJ is doing, we're going to see DOJ override Constitutional concerns more and more often.

Update: nolo has the passage from the OIG report on this here.

Con't-Opednews

Thanks Lucille :)