The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Friday that it had improperly obtained the phone records of reporters for The New York Times and The Washington Post in the newspapers’ Indonesia bureaus in 2004.

[snip]

The Justice Department places a high bar on the collection of reporters’ records in investigations because of First Amendment concerns, and obtaining such records requires the approval of the deputy attorney general. That requirement was not followed when the F.B.I. obtained the records of two reporters for The Times in Indonesia, Raymond Bonner and Jane Perlez, as well as two reporters there for The Post, Ellen Nakashima and Natasha Tampubolon, officials said.

[snip]

An initial report by the inspector general last year found that the F.B.I. had violated its own policies in tens of thousands of cases by obtaining phone records in terrorism investigations through what are known as national security letters, without first getting needed approval or meeting other standards. In some cases, the F.B.I. used a whole new class of demands — emergency or “exigent” letters — that are not authorized by law. The emergency records were used in the Indonesian episode.

Link

Not my favorite news source, but will interesting if picked up by other media.

Bugs there was a show on yesterday at 4 am call CIA secrets revealed. I thought about you as it went into collection of telecommunications.

What did you think about the show?

I knew most of it, but it really went in to how telecommunications work and the ease of picking up signals

What do you think about the FBI breaking its own rules in tens of thousands of cases? Is that abuse of power?

I think that by not doing it the right way yes it was an abuse of power

Me too. That's why it's not good to give too much power. The tricky part is determining what's enough, but not too much.

And why controls need to be in place to balance that power out, like periodic audits by the GAO or some other independent agency (just like the audits in banking).

Bugs, controls are in place, they didn't follow them. I don't call that an abuse of power, I call that stupidity. If it is found that they truly didn't follow internal policies, steps should be taken to punsih the guilty. Not doing so would be an abuse of power.

Happy, you suggest that established controls were not followed. What kind of control allows tens of thousands exceptions? I don't know about your bank, but if we had tens of thousands of the same type of violation occur, I suspect our regulator (not to mention our board or shareholders) would probably suggest we didn't really have controls. I think that they might call it "window dressing."

The FBI is not a bank -- it has a lot more real power than a bank. If a bank has a few violations -- that's "stupid." If the FBI has thousands of violations created by inadequately supervised (i.e. controlled) hotshots in the field who are improperly invading the private information of American citizens, that's something other than "stupid."

now bugs, the FBI could have taken in those coms in a matter of minutes. if i could explain the techonology used i would

Try giving us a readers digest condensed version.

AMLF,
It's not really pertinent to the discussion at hand.

In any event, kms, the thousands of incidents Bugs is referring to represent separate incidents, not the volume of data obtained from the reporter's switchboards.

My personal favorite was the case where the FBI asked for student records using a grand jury subpoena. The university turned over the records. The field office told the agents that they didn't want the records as the product of a grand jury subpoena, they wanted them as a result of an NSL. The agents returned the records, and cobbled together an NSL for student records and served the letter on the university. Which the university refused, because student records aren't among the types of permissible records covered by the NSL regs.

boy i really dont want to go into multiplexing, but what happens to make the most of bandwidth is that a bit is taken from many phone calls at one time and then the like bits are put back together on the other end.

So are you suggesting that controls were followed? I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. It is pretty clear to me that controls that are in place weren't followed, regardless of the number of times they were violated. That speaks to other issues, such as enforcement of controls and checking to make sure they were followed, not that there aren't any. Or, are you suggesting that the FBI intentionally overlooks when controls aren't followed?

We can call them "controls" all day long, but in the end, controls that don't control are not really controls.


It could be, but I'm trying to suggest that either the FBI's controls are inadequate, or that they have agents, and perhaps supervisors, in the field purposely evading the controls because they think they have a "higher calling" to do so for some reason.

agree, often internal controls are more strict then the actual law... that is why banks are not fined for violating internal controls.

People control, controls (polices, procedures, etc) are only good if people follow them, they don't really perform any function, those functions are performed by people. You do understand this, don't you?

Sure I do. Are we arguing semantics or are you just trying to score debate points?

If people don't follow controls, then nothing is being controlled so it's the same as being uncontrolled. You do understand this don't you?

KMS,

Would have been easier to just say PFM.

yeah but then there would have been more confusion on some peoples parts

My parts are not confused.

Interesting avatar, Socialism is Neat. However, I think Scientology is waaaaaay more creepier.