Even the FBI should follow the rules
Friday, March 16, 2007 12:55 PM PDT
The term “national security letters” even sounds intimidating. It’s a request for private information that the FBI can make without needing a court-authorized warrant, on the grounds that time and secrecy are essential. They cannot be appealed, or even publicly revealed, and in the Patriot Act Congress greatly expanded both their use and the number of FBI officials who can sign them.
And now a report from Department of Justice Inspector General Glenn Fine finds that in the resulting explosion of national security letters, they have been overused, badly justified and failed to meet the requirements that Congress enacted. The report did not say that problems were more than mistakes, and the FBI hurried to endorse all of the report’s recommendations to tighten the process.
But the problems are substantial — and the inspector general’s office couldn’t closely investigate all of them — and exactly the kinds of issues that should have been foreseen when the powers were expanded. The story shows how such extrajudicial powers move from an emergency rarity to an easy convenience, and why such powers should be sparingly granted and sparingly used.
It's also true that President Bush rejected some of these reporting requirements in a signing statement last year. His opposition may have influenced FBI thinking.
According to the inspector general’s report, the use of national security letters increased from 8,000 a year to 47,000 after the Patriot Act said that, instead of applying only to foreign agents, they could be issued to anyone the Justice Department thought might have useful information. The report found that many of the letters had never been justified, that even after the expansion of officials with signing power, letters had been signed by officials without signing power, and that use of the letters was often underreported. Exigent letters were sometimes not followed by either.
The Justice Department promises to fix the problem, and Congress now promises to watch closely.
This time, they should both be bound by their promises — and the rules.
— The Oregonian
