Justice Department Audits Flag FBI Privacy Abuses

WASHINGTON, March 13, 2008 — -- Two Justice Department audits out Thursday highlight reported FBI abuses in the gathering of personal information for national security cases, despite concerns raised by judges. The department's Inspector General has found that the FBI requested 192,499 records with no judicial review in between 2003-2006.

The figures comes in a new report issued by Inspector General Glenn Fine finding that the FBI issued 49,425 national security letters in 2006, a 4.7 percent increase over the last publicly disclosed figures. National security letters allow FBI investigators to obtain personal records such as internet, phone and financial information without going first to a judge for a warrant.

A separate report from the Inspector General, also released Thursday, found that the FBI submitted 47 requests to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret court comprised of federal judges designated to consider such requests, under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act.

Requests under Section 215, the so-called "Library Provision," allow the FBI to obtain business record information. The Inspector General found that on two occasions, the FISA Court denied the requests under the Patriot Act. The FBI then used national security letters to obtain the information.

"We found that the FBI had issued national security letters (NSL) for information& after the FISA Court, citing first amendment concerns, had twice declined to sign section 215 orders in the same investigation," the report noted.

The NSL report found continued problems with how the FBI used national security letters, and that the record requests were issued without proper authorization and resulted in the improper collection of telephone and e-mail records.

But the FBI said the numbers represent requests made before it put remedial measures into place.

"Not surprisingly, the errors discovered by the IG in connection with NSLs served during 2006 are similar to those discovered during the 2003-2005 review period," FBI Assistant Director John Miller said of the report's findings. "The FBI's extensive corrective actions began after the Inspector General brought these issues to our attention in the report published in 2007."