Glenn Greenwald
Thursday March 6, 2008 08:05 EST
Shocking new revelation: Unchecked government powers get abused
One year ago, the Inspector General's Office -- the independent audit arm of the DOJ -- issued a lengthy report (.pdf) detailing that the FBI, for the years 2003-2005, had used "National Security Letters" (NSLs) to gather information on thousands of Americans in violation of the law. Pursuant to the Patriot Act, "NSLs" permit the FBI and other federal agencies to obtain all sorts of invasive information from telecoms, Internet and email providers, even health care providers and the like without any judicial warrants or any other oversight of any kind.
Last year's IG report documented thousands of cases where the FBI abused the extraordinary power of NSLs -- the FBI made false statements to obtain the information, did so where the information had nothing to do with any pending investigations, obtained far more data than even The Patriot Act allows, etc. The Report emphasized that there were likely many more abuses it was unable to document because the FBI had failed to comply with Congressional record-keeping and reporting requirements (requirements which President Bush, in a signing statement issued when he signed the Patriot Act, declared he had no obligation to follow). The information about Americans obtained by the FBI through these NSLs is stored permanently on vast federal data bases which tens of thousands of people both in the public and private sector can access.
A new report to be released this week by the IG, as confirmed yesterday by FBI Director Robert Mueller, details that these abuses continued unabated throughout 2006 as well. It seems there are a few brand new lessons that we can perhaps draw from these revelations:
(1) If unchecked power is vested in government officials, they're going to abuse that power;
(2) If government officials exercise power without real oversight from other branches, they're going to break the law and then lie about it, falsely denying that they're done so, insisting instead that they're only using their powers to Protect Us;
(3) Allowing government officials to engage in surveillance on American citizens with no warrant requirement ensures that surveillance will be used for improper ends, against innocent Americans.
Who could have guessed? How come nobody warned us about the dangers of "unchecked government power" and the need for checks and balances?
more...
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
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