Civil Liberties are indispensable because sometimes the government gets it wrong

Does anyone remember the anthrax attacks that happened in the weeks following the attacks of September 11, 2001? I sure as hell do, because literally everyone in my line of work (clinical laboratory sciences) got looked at very closely. We will not soon be forgetting how quickly we became suspect after our decades of service to the public and, in many, many cases, service in the military in the Medical Officer Corps.

The government really dropped the ball on that one and still haven't caught the culprit(s). They did manage to ruin the life and career of one academic, though. Now they have settled with him, to the tune of $5.8 million dollars.


From MSNBC:

The Justice Department on Friday agreed to pay more than $5.8 million to Steven Hatfill, the former government scientist once branded by the Justice Department a person of interest in the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001. The legal settlement to Hatfill, in cash and an annual payments, signals the end of a civil lawsuit Hatfill brought against the Justice Department and FBI, accusing them of violating his privacy rights by improperly leaking sensitive information about the anthrax investigation to reporters.

"I think it's a gratifying end to a very sad chapter in [Hatfill's] life and that of the FBI and DOJ,” said Hatfill’s lawyer, Thomas Connolly, of the Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis law firm in Washington, D.C. “I'm hopeful that the settlement is punitive enough that they will learn their lesson" regarding the treatment of future suspects in high-profile criminal cases, he told NBC News.

The settlement language tries to give the government a figleaf by stating that it "should not be construed as an admission of liability or fault on the part of the FBI or Justice Department" but only an idiot will believe it. Lots of us remember the attorney general naming former Army scientist Steven Hatfill as a "person of interest" in the anthrax attacks, we remember that the FBI agents and Justice Department officials leaked key details about the case to willing reporters, according to depositions provided in Hatfill’s civil suit. The FBI kept the pressure on Hatfill by conspicuously tailing him in public, with one agent in an unmarked car once running over his foot. We also remember the resulting media trial as the first anniversary of September 11 drew near.

Hatfill deserves at least as much compensation as he received. And the government officials who leaked the information should face federal civil rights charges. And I would be saying that even if I didn't take Mr. Hatfill's experience so very personally on so very many levels.

And the fact that the government, spurred on by a 24-hour news cycle that encourages speculation and false accusations, gets it so spectacularly wrong so freakin' often (Richard Jewell, anyone?) is exactly why it is so important to jealously safeguard our remaining liberties.

There's more: "Civil Liberties are indispensable because sometimes the government gets it wrong" >>

The Garden Club is Next

Suppose an anti-abortion group becomes frustrated by its inability to shut down the sole clinic providing abortions in your town. Decades of protests, lobbying the legislature and governor, disseminating educational materials have accomplished nothing; the abortions go on.

Several of the group's more excitable members decide that the only option left is direct action. They decide to burn down the clinic.

But they will burn it down at night, when the clinic is closed and no one is inside. Adjoining buildings will also be empty.

One person builds the incendiary device, he and three others break into the building at night and set the device, and a fifth person stands guard outside with a walkie-talkie to warn the others if guards or police appear.

The operation is successful. The building burns to the ground, no one is physically harmed, and the access to safe and legal abortions in your town is eliminated for the time being.

Most importantly, the group has sent a message to elected officials: abortions will not be tolerated in this town.

The arsonists are criminals, certainly, but are they terrorists?

What if they are environmentalists opposed to genetic engineering of trees who burn down an empty research lab?

The federal government is now using draconian post-9/11 powers to intimidate, attack and imprison for "terrorism" political dissenters who commit property crimes.

Don't get me wrong; I hold no brief for people who destroy personal property, especially if it is my personal property.

However, as a native-born American citizen and taxpayer in good standing, I really prefer that the FBI concentrate on homicide cases involving the actual murder of actual human beings rather than, you know, trespassing. Or even arson.

And I really, really don't want them exaggering political dissent into "terrorism" as an excuse to use the Constitution for toilet paper.

Salon has the frightening, depressing and infuriating details.

Earlier this month, on March 6, a federal jury in Tacoma, Wash., found Waters guilty of two counts of arson for serving as a lookout at the University of Washington fire. According to two women who testified against her in return for dramatically reduced sentences, Waters hid in a shrub near the Center for Urban Horticulture with a walkie-talkie, ready to alert the others if the campus police strolled by. Waters testified she wasn't even in Seattle that night.

Although Waters was on trial for only the University of Washington arson, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Friedman charged that she was part of a conspiracy -- a member of a "prolific cell" of the Earth Liberation Front, responsible for 17 fires set in four states over five years. Ten conspirators have pleaded guilty and been sentenced; four have fled the country; three are awaiting sentencing. Waters, the only one of the accused to have pleaded innocent and therefore the only one to have stood trial, now faces 20 years in prison.

Prosecutors celebrated the guilty verdict against Waters as a signal victory in the campaign against "eco-terror," a mission that the U.S. Department of Justice has made the centerpiece of its domestic counterterrorism program. "This cell of eco-terrorists thought they had a 'right' to sit in judgment and destroy the hard work of dedicated researchers at the UW and elsewhere," U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Sullivan declared in announcing Waters' conviction. "Today's verdict shows that no one is above the law."

Civil libertarians draw a different moral from the verdict. For them it is evidence of how the Justice Department has exaggerated the threat of eco-sabotage; they see Waters' story as a disturbing example of the misuse of federal authority and the excessive reach of the American counterterrorism program in the wake of 9/11. As Lauren Regan, director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center in Eugene, Ore., remarks: "There's a question of whether burning property is really the equivalent of flying a plane into a building and killing humans."

(SNIP)

Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI director Robert Mueller decided "they are going to restructure the FBI as a terrorism prevention organization rather than just a crime-fighting organization," explains Ben Rosenfeld, a civil rights attorney in San Francisco. The FBI vastly expanded its domestic and international terrorism capabilities, adding whole new categories of crime to its terrorism portfolio. Acts once considered property crimes -- like the arson at the University of Washington --were now assigned not to the bureau's criminal division but to the terrorism division.

(SNIP)

In the wake of 9/11, federal prosecutors had some new legal tools at their disposal. Historically, the crime of terrorism has required civilian deaths. In fact, the tate Department defined terrorism as "premeditated politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatants." But the USA Patriot Act created a new category of domestic terrorism, which is defined as an offense "calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government" or "to intimidate or coerce a civilian population." Under this broad definition, eco-saboteurs become terrorists if their crime seeks to change government policy or action.

Several Republican members of Congress didn't want to stop there. In a letter sent to eight mainstream environmental groups such as the Sierra Club, Colorado Rep. Scott McInnis and six other congressmen demanded that respectable environmental organizations "publicly disavow the actions of eco-terrorist organizations." In
2006, Congress passed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, which imposes severe punishments on anyone who "intentionally damages or causes the loss of any real or personal property used by an animal enterprise."

(SNIP)

If Waters encounters the full force of the government's anti-terror zeal, it will be when she is sentenced on May 30. Prosecutors have not yet decided whether to seek a "terrorism enhancement" -- a sentencing rule that was written into the federal sentencing guidelines in 1995, after the bombings in Oklahoma City and at the World Trade Center, and would allow the judge to add up to 20 years to her prison term if her crime can be construed as a terrorist act.

Prosecutors sought the enhancement for six of the 10 Operation Backfire arsonists, who have been sentenced already, a significant departure from legal convention. (Meyerhoff, despite his cooperation, received a 13-year sentence.) "Never before has the terrorism enhancement been applied where there were no deaths," says Lauren Regan of the Civil Liberties Defense Center.

(SNIP)

Nonviolent protesters have already felt the heat. Documents obtained in 2005 by the ACLU reveal that the FBI has been surveying animal rights and environmental groups like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Greenpeace, sending undercover agents to activist conferences and cultivating inside informants. Some of the documents suggest that the bureau was also attempting to link those groups with the ELF and ALF. The National Lawyers Guild reports that it receives calls regularly from environmental and animal-rights activists all over the country who had been contacted by the FBI after attending political events. "It has a chilling effect on free speech," says Guild director Boghosian, "and that's where the real damage to the Constitution is happening."

' ... an offense "calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government."' Ever seen a bunch of really pissed-off Garden Club members raise hell at a city council meeting? What if one of the mayor's options was calling the FBI to haul them off to Guantanamo?

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

There's more: "The Garden Club is Next" >>

Mukasey in the Hot Seat

During his confirmation hearings last fall, new Attorney General Michael Mukasey pledged to act independently and swore that he would not hesitate to pursue investigations that might displease the Bush administration.

A month in, he is faced with calls for an investigation into the destruction of video of interrogations of terror suspects that show the men being tortured. Such an investigation would delve into the heart of darkness itself, and expose some of the most closely guarded secrets of the Bush administration, highlighting the "aggressive interrogation" favored - nay lusted after - by the small men in the administration for what it is: Torture.

Torture is a crime against humanity, under treaty as well as international statute.

Last week, Senator Dick Durbin (D - IL) officially requested the Attorney General open an investigation into the destruction of the tapes. "The CIA apparently withheld information about the existence of these videotapes from official proceedings, including the 9/11 Commission and a federal court," Durbin charged in the letter he sent to Mukasey.

But this story just keeps getting weirder and weirder:

Justice officials refused to comment on what the new A.G. will do, but White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said that if he does open an investigation, the White House would support him. The videotapes, made in 2002, showed the questioning of two high-level Qaeda detainees, including logistics chief Abu Zubaydah, whose interrogation at a secret cell in Thailand sparked an internal battle within the U.S. intelligence community after FBI agents angrily protested the aggressive methods that were used. In addition to waterboarding, Zubaydah was subjected to sleep deprivation and bombarded with blaring rock music by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. One [FBI] agent was so offended he threatened to arrest the CIA interrogators, according to two former government officials directly familiar with the dispute. [emphasis added]

Yes. You read that right. An FBI agent was so put off by what he witnessed, he threatened to take the CIA interrogators into custody. And when an FBI agent threatens to arrest CIA agents,it is safe to say that the CIA agents have definitely crossed a bright line.

[Keep reading...]

Officials with the CIA claim that the decision was made three years ago to destroy the tapes. The "reason" the CIA gives for the destruction is laughable: The identity of the torturers interrogators might pose a security risk if the tapes were to leak.

Please.

Spare me.

The identity of the interrogators might pose an incarceration risk.

And if they were acting on orders from the White House, they would most likely say so before they went to prison for a long time for committing war crimes.

The CIA destroyed the tapes in spite of requests for records of interrogations by multiple entities, includign the Senate Intelligence Committee and the 9/11 Commission. Representative Jane Harman, then the ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee had also submitted a written directive that videos of interrogations be preserved.

Additionally, in the trial of Zacharias Moussaoui , defense attorneys requested any video of interrogations, but the CIA told a Federal judge that no videos existed. (Got Perjury? Hows about Obstruction of Justice?)

A thorough investigation into the destruction of the video tapes by the Justice Department would be undertaken with one goal: Find out who issued the orders and make that person accountable. Porter Goss was the CIA Director at the time, and thought he had an "understanding" with ops officials that the tapes would be preserved. He reportedly was extremely unhappy when he learned that the tapes had been destroyed. Meantime, Jose Rodriguez, who as head of the Clandesting Service at the time and issued the destroy order has a reputation as a "loyal subordinate" who would never have taken it upon himself to make such a decision.

Whoever ordered that the tapes be destroyed, all eyes are on Mukaey now.

There's more: "Mukasey in the Hot Seat" >>

FBI criminal profiling – little more than psychics’ “cold reading”

Why the FBI needs even more reform than just being dragged into the Computer Era

Cold reading is what pseudo-telepathic frauds like James van Praagh and John Edward use to make gullible people believe that they can actually read their minds. It’s obviously unscientific. A practitioner makes vague, open-ended statements to fish for information. With the exception of fishing for information, your newspaper horoscope is the same thing, of course.

Well, Skeptic’s Dictionary author Bob Carroll, following up on a New Yorker article by psychosocial insight guru Malcolm Gladwell and an actual statistical survey (PDF) by the University of Liverpool, argues that FBI criminal profiling is little more than bogus cold reading.

Carroll notes about the Liverpool study:

First, the psychologists argue that profiling won't work the way the F.B.I. does it. (F.B.I. profiling assumes a stable relationship between configurations of offense behaviors and background characteristics, which is not supported by the research evidence.) Second, they note that the F.B.I. claims a high degree of accuracy for the method that supposedly shouldn't work. Then, they explain the illusion of accuracy as due to subjective validation.

And then, about the actual FBI profiling study Liverpool analyzed:

It also turns out that it shouldn't be surprising that the profile is bogus. It wasn't based on a representative sample. According to Gladwell, the F.B.I. profilers who came up with the serial killer profile, John Douglas and Robert Ressler, chatted only with convicts who were in prison in California. Furthermore, they had no standardized protocol for interviewing their subjects.

The FBI had been operating under the premise that serial killers fall into two types. Those who preplan their individual killings, based on victim age, race, sex, etc., for some particular psychological fix, and those who kill at random. They then assumed that each type of serial killer had a profile based on a different personality type.

Well, profiles were somewhat off in many cases, and egregiously off in many others. Gladwell says that in Britain, the Home Office studies 184 criminal cases which had profilers involved, and the success rate was 2.7 percent.

More below the fold (pretty long):

The problem is even worse than that, Gladwell points out. Ultimately, the FBI method of developing details that are supposed to belong to a certain type of profile, such as one type of serial killer versus the other, is unscientific:

(FBI agents) Douglas and Ressler didn’t interview a representative sample of serial killers to come up with their typology. They talked to whoever happened to be in the neighborhood. Nor did they interview their subjects according to a standardized protocol. They just sat down and chatted, which isn’t a particularly firm foundation for a psychological system. So you might wonder whether serial killers can really be categorized by their level of organization.

The Liverpool study went back and analyzed a number of specific killings committed by serial killers. They started with the idea that traits that fit in the profile or organized killer, or disorganized killer, would “interlock” with one another.

Not true. Most the crimes had specific factors that were a mix of both profile types.

And, here’s exactly how it’s like cold reading:

A few years ago, Laurence Alison, one of the leaders of the Liverpool group and the author of “The Forensic Psychologist’s Casebook,” went back to the case of the teacher who was murdered on the roof of her building in the Bronx. He wanted to know why, if the F.B.I.’s approach to criminal profiling was based on such simplistic psychology, it continues to have such a sterling reputation. The answer, he suspected, lay in the way the profiles were written, and, sure enough, when he broke down the rooftop-killer analysis, sentence by sentence, he found that it was so full of unverifiable and contradictory and ambiguous language that it could support virtually any interpretation.

Gladwell begins his article by noting that profiling has many of its roots in Freudian psychiatry, which means that, beyond being cold reading fishing expeditions, actual profiling work-ups are also often wrong in the same way that Freudian psychiatry is.

We of course have seen FBI profiling go tragically wrong three notable times in recent years, first in falsely implicating Richard Jewell as the Atlanta Olympics bomber. the failure to consider blacks as sniper-type serial killers, as was disproved by John Allan Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, and finally, getting the Wichita, Kan. BTK serial killer incredibly misprofiled while he remained at large for decades. Note this FBI profiling of BTK, vs. the reality, from 1984:

The best minds in the F.B.I. had given the Wichita detectives a blueprint for their investigation. Look for an American male with a possible connection to the military. His I.Q. will be above 105. He will like to masturbate, and will be aloof and selfish in bed. He will drive a decent car. He will be a “now” person. He won’t be comfortable with women. But he may have women friends. He will be a lone wolf. But he will be able to function in social settings. He won’t be unmemorable. But he will be unknowable. He will be either never married, divorced, or married, and if he was or is married his wife will be younger or older. He may or may not live in a rental, and might be lower class, upper lower class, lower middle class or middle class. And he will be crazy like a fox, as opposed to being mental. If you’re keeping score, that’s a Jacques Statement, two Barnum Statements, four Rainbow Ruses, a Good Chance Guess, two predictions that aren’t really predictions because they could never be verified—and nothing even close to the salient fact that BTK was a pillar of his community, the president of his church and the married father of two.

Now that we have strong academic reasons for saying FBI profiling (not to mention movies based on it like “Silence of the Lambs”) is pretty much full of shit, we need to get the Attorney General in the next administration to get the FBI’s badly needed technological updates to be done in a way to push seat of the pants, cold-reading “criminal profiling” to the fringes of the Bureau.

Let’s put this in the “War on Terror” context. We could have false profiles of terror bombers (witness Jewell for a past sample of that). Or note that Transportation Security “watch lists” are based n about the same level of scientific credibility.

Shoe leather detective work is one thing. But seat-of-the-pants hunches and guesswork gussied up as “profiling” is another thing altogether.

There's more: "FBI criminal profiling – little more than psychics’ “cold reading”" >>

Incompetence? Or Obstruction?

Justice Department officials grappling with bringing to account the Blackwater mercenaries involved in the murderous rampage in Nissour Square on September 16 got a nasty surprise. Investigators from the State Department - who lacked the authority to do so - offered Blackwater USA security guards immunity in exchange for their statements. State Department protocols require that Diplomatic Security agents investigate and report all incidents in which force is used. Last week, the chief of the Diplomatic Security Bureau, Richard J. Griffin, resigned abruptly. Presumably, his inability to control Blackwater was at the root of his sudden departure, but now it looks like he may have left in advance of this information becoming public.

FBI agents took over the State Department's investigation two weeks after the Sept. 16 killing spree, but the damage was already done. None of the information obtained during questioning of the guards by the department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the division of the State Department that oversees security contractors, will be admissible. (I believe that defense attorneys call this "fruit of the poisoned tree.")

Subsequently, some Blackwater guards have cited promises of immunity from State, and refused to even be interviewed by the FBI. The Justice Department is not precluded from bringing charges using other evidence, but the inadmissibility of their initial statements complicates matters significantly.

[keep reading]

From the New York Times:

Most of the guards who took part in the Sept. 16 shooting were offered what officials described as limited-use immunity, which means that they were promised that they would not be prosecuted for anything they said in their interviews with the authorities as long as their statements were true. The immunity offers were first reported Monday by The Associated Press.

The officials who spoke of the immunity deals have been briefed on the matter, but agreed to talk about the arrangement only on the condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to discuss a continuing criminal investigation.

The precise legal status of the immunity offer is unclear. Those who have been offered immunity would seem likely to assert that their statements are legally protected, even as some government officials say that immunity was never officially sanctioned by the Justice Department.

Spokesmen for the State and Justice Departments would not comment on the matter. A State Department official said, “If there’s any truth to this story, then the decision was made without consultation with senior officials in Washington.”

This complicates an already-dicey legal situation. Blackwater and other mercenary outfits are immune from prosecution under Iraqi law under Order 17, signed by Paul Bremmer on his way out of town. The order still stands, the Iraqi parliament has not repealed it. They can't be tried in military courts (at least not yet.) And it is unclear what American criminal statutes apply to armed Americans operating in a war zone.

A review panel sent by State to investigate the incident determined that the legal standing to hold the Blackwater mercenaries to account under U.S. federal statute was lacking, and urged Congress to address this gaping loophole in accountability and oversight authority. To date, the House has passed a bill with an overwhelming majority that would hold all security contractors* liable under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act; the Senate is considering similar legislation. Some legal experts have suggested that the Nissour Square killings be the first cases prosecuted through the act once it is extended.

But...(Isn't there always a great big But...?)

For a case to be tried in federal court, evidence is only admissible when it meets a very high chain-of-custody bar, designed to put in place guarantees that evidence has not been tampered with. Evidence gathered by foreign investigators and turned over to U.S. investigators is reflexively seen as suspect on it's face, and the admissibility of the evidence would be contested by any first year law student. Additionally, the Constitutional guarantee of the accused to cross-examine witnesses is problematic in these instances, requiring foreign witnesses be transported to the United States to appear in court.

What was from the outset a brutally difficult case to bring was complicated further by the actions of the State Department investigators.

So was it incompetence? Could the Keystone Kops run a better State Department?

Or was it obstruction? Yet another instance of sand in the umpires eyes?


*security contractors = mercenaries

There's more: "Incompetence? Or Obstruction?" >>

FBI investigating Blackwater in wake of Sept. 16 rampage

The FBI is sending a team of investigators to Iraq to investigate the bloody September 16 rampage by Blackwater mercenaries against Iraqi civilians at a busy traffic roundabout in Nisoor Square in Baghdad. At least 11 civilians died, including a family of three that burned to death in their vehicle. The heat was so intense that the two-year-old child was melted to his mother’s body.

Special Agent Richard Kolko confirmed that the FBI is initiating the investigation at the behest of the State Department. "The results of the investigation will be reviewed for possible criminal liability and referred to the appropriate legal authority," Kolko said.

Blackwater has had a tremendous termination rate among their mercenaries in Iraq. 122 have been fired, or about one in seven Blackwater mercenaries have been terminated for various reasons, ranging from substance abuse to violent behavior and misuse of weapons. This low ratio raises serious questions about the character of the people hired by Blackwater. On Christmas Eve of last year, a Blackwater mercenary, drunk and belligerent, gunned down a bodyguard for Iraq’s Vice President, he faced no consequences and was spirited out of Iraq within 36 hours.

Officials in Baghdad and Washington then dickered with Blackwater on the compensation for the family of the guard, Raheem Khalif. An unnamed official in the State Department's Diplomatic Security service complained that the $250,000 payment proposed by the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was too much, because it might lead Iraqis to "try to get killed so as to set up their family financially," according to a State Department e-mail obtained by the committee.

When a Blackwater contract employee killed an Iraqi in Hillah in June 2005, the State Department asked the firm to pay $5,000 in compensation. "(W)e are all better off getting this case — and any similar cases — behind us quickly," a department official wrote.

A report prepared by the majority staff of the House Oversight Committee that was released today reveals that Blackwater has been involved in 195 shooting incidents since 2005 – approximately 1.5 per week. In 84% of the instances, Blackwater fired first – even though the contract the company has with the State Department calls for the defensive use of force only. Blackwater has been involved in more live-fire incidents than the other two *Security Contractor* companies combined.

"In the vast majority of instances in which Blackwater fired shots, Blackwater is firing from a moving vehicle and does not remain at the scene to determine if the shots resulted in casualties," according to the report.

The staff report paints Blackwater as a company that's made huge sums of money despite its questionable performance in Iraq, where Blackwater guards provide protective services for U.S. diplomatic personnel.

Blackwater has earned more than $1 billion from federal contracts since 2001, when it had less than $1 million in government work. Overall, the State Department paid Blackwater more than $832 million between 2004 and 2006 for security work, according to the report.

The report was presented to committee members today, in advance of testimony before the committee by Blackwater founder and chairman, Eric Prince, scheduled for tomorrow.

Anne Tyrrell, a Blackwater spokesperson, made the obligatory ‘we look forward to the opportunity to clear our name’ remarks in advance of the hearings: "We look forward to setting the record straight on this issue and others tomorrow when Erik Prince testifies before the committee." quoth Anne Tyrrell.

Several investigations are being undertaken into the incident,

The mercenary company has a few friends on the committee, who have requested that the hearings be postponed until the ongoing investigations are complete.

In a Sept. 28 letter, Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., and six other Republicans said the committee should wait until these investigations are complete.

"We feel it would be irresponsible for the committee to rush to judgment until all the facts are considered," the letter states.

Rep. Tom Davis or Virginia, the committee's top Republican, did not sign the letter.

Prince is just one of the witnesses scheduled to testify. Several State Department higher-ups are scheduled to appear as well, including the assistant secretary for logistics management and the assistant secretary for diplomatic security.

A spokesman for Davis said that the Congressman had no objection to the hearings moving forward because the State Department officials were scheduled to appear as well.

Lets hope that everyone appearing before the committee is asked to explain the apparent collusion between State and her Praetorian Guard to cover up incidents of Blackwater violence against Iraqi civilians.

There's more: "FBI investigating Blackwater in wake of Sept. 16 rampage" >>

FBI data mining hunts more than “terrorists,” dates back to Clinton in one program

The Justice Department revealed the G-men are doing six differentdata mining projects, only one of which has a direct link to terrorism, with only one of the other five having even a remote link, from what I can tell.

Two things to note: First, I don’t believe FBI/DOJ claims about how careful they are of civil liberties. Second, one of the totally unconnected to terrorism data-mining programs, the one on real estate fraud, dates back to the Clinton Administration.

The FBI is using data mining programs to track everyone from potential terrorists to individuals who file fraudulent automobile insurance claims, according to a U.S. Department of Justice report filed with Congress this week.

The DOJ report, which is required under the Patriot Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005, details six pattern-based data mining initiatives currently under way or planned by the department and its components. …

Among the six FBI pattern-based data mining initiatives listed in the DOJ report are:

-- A soon-to-be-launched program called the System to Assess Risk initiative designed to help FBI analysts focus in on individuals who may merit further scrutiny from a terrorist standpoint. According to the DOJ, the initiative will not "label anyone a terrorist." Rather, it is designed to help the FBI save time by focusing on those who have already been identified as persons of interest.

-- An identity theft intelligence project that examines customer complaints relating to identity theft to look for patterns suggesting major ID theft rings in a given area. The data mining effort has been used to identify trends and generate leads for the FBI since 2003.

-- An initiative dating back to 1999 under which the FBI has been examining public records on real estate transactions to identify potentially fraudulent housing transactions.

Of the three other data mining programs, one is aimed at identifying Internet pharmacy fraud, another at fraud involving automobile insurance and the third at health-care-related fraud.

In all instances, adequate care has been taken to ensure that the right privacy and civil liberties protections are in place, the DOJ statement said.

Sure. Right.

Now, I’m not saying that there is anything necessarily wrong with any of these programs, other than they’ve been operating in semi-darkness for as long as eight years.

There's more: "FBI data mining hunts more than “terrorists,” dates back to Clinton in one program" >>

FEC Drops Investigation of Renzi After He Pays Taxes And Agrees To Fine

Jim Kuhnhenn of the AP reports that

Arizona Rep. Rick Renzi avoided federal campaign penalties by paying $323,830 in back taxes last year to reassure regulators that loans to his political committee came from his own pocket.

The Federal Election Commission, in documents made public Tuesday, said it decided to take no further action against Renzi regarding the source of the loans to his 2001-2002 congressional campaign.

Renzi, a Republican, did agree to pay a $25,000 fine for unrelated reporting violations during that election cycle.

Apparently the FBI is still investigating his questionable land deal.

There's more: "FEC Drops Investigation of Renzi After He Pays Taxes And Agrees To Fine" >>

The Fourth Amendment and the Patriot Act

Liberals, Conservatives and just plain old Americans should be proud of the Fourth Amendment. You remember the Fourth Amendment, don't you. It goes something like this.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

A few years ago in the shadow of 9/11, quaking with fear, we enacted the US Patriot Act. Among other things that act allows the FBI to issue what are called "national security letters." A "national security letter" is like a warrant without the need for a judge. According to a letter to the editor of the Washington Post in the period between 2003 and 2005 the FBI issued more than 140,000 specific demands under the Patriot Act to obtain potentially sensitive information about U.S. citizens and residents. One hundred forty thousand, are there that many suspected terrorists? Well, no there aren't but the FBI can issue a National Security Letter when it is "relevant" to an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities, provided the investigation is not based solely on the First Amendment-protected activities of U.S. citizens, permanent residents, or domestic corporations or associations.

As a practical matter the current standard means that if you have a nephew in law who is suspected of knowing somebody who went to school with a party of interest in a "terrorism" case the FBI can snoop around in your Internet records without adult supervision. I know, the lawyers reading this are going to point out that "relevant" is a stronger standard than I suggest, and an NSL can only be issued when exigent circumstances are present, but according to a recent Report of the DoJ's Inspector General outlining NSL abuses it seems without fear of being turned down by a Judge, some FBI Agents have been a little loose in their interpretation of the law. Michael Dorf reports in a FindLaw Article that

Among the problems identified by the report are: sloppy and inconsistent record keeping by the FBI, which resulted in substantial under-reporting of errors within the FBI; NSLs that were signed by personnel without proper authorization to do so; confusion among recipients of NSLs that resulted in disclosure of private information to which the FBI was not entitled; and most disturbingly, a pattern of short-circuiting the already-streamlined NSL process by improperly labeling requests as exigent in the absence of any exigency.

This is an issue of importance. We have to give law enforcement the tools needed to keep us safe, but to secure our freedoms we have to make sure the use of those tools is overseen by adults. The adults contemplated by the Constitution are judges. The founding fathers were pretty smart. Maybe they were right.

There's more: "The Fourth Amendment and the Patriot Act" >>