by Patrick Lang
The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, according to government sources, a hundredfold increase over historic norms. The letters — one of which can be used to sweep up the records of many people — are extending the bureau’s reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans.
Issued by FBI field supervisors, national security letters do not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge. They receive no review after the fact by the Justice Department or Congress. The executive branch maintains only statistics, which are incomplete and confined to classified reports. The Bush administration defeated legislation and a lawsuit to require a public accounting, and has offered no example in which the use of a national security letter helped disrupt a terrorist plot.” Washpost
So, basically, a field superviser in the FBI can issue a “national security letter” with your name on it, and on that basis they can go to anyone with whom you have had an information “transaction” and demand the record of that transaction or any others. Having done that, the FBI can forbid their “informant” permission to ever tell anyone about it.
The “Patriot Act?” This is patriotism?
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Col. Patrick W. Lang (Ret.), a highly decorated retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces, served as “Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism” for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and was later the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. Col. Lang was the first Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Academy at West Point. For his service in the DIA, he was awarded the “Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive.” He is a frequent commentator on television and radio, including PBS’s Newshour, and most recently on MSNBC’s Hardball and NPR’s “All Things Considered.”.
Personal Blog: Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005 || Bio || CV
Recommended Books || More BooTrib <a href="Posts
Novel: The Butcher’s Cleaver (download free by chapter, PDF format)
“Drinking the Kool-Aid,” Middle East Policy Council Journal, Vol. XI, Summer 2004, No. 2
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This obsessive secrecy is just frightening.
Surely there are some people who the FBI is right to investigate, but we had adequate laws, already, to accomplish that… if there were truly a threat.
I have often said that this administration is a dictatorship, without a dictatorship: they have to control the flow of information.
The ‘entity’ that receives the NSL is prohibited from disclosing any information, including the request/letter itself, with the target of the letter. This is also the piece of work that asks for library records. It’s been a problem for a few years and I’m not sure if it has been reauthorized or if it might be allowed to expire at the end of this year.
It’s another useful tool for honorable purposes or wrongful prosecution depending on how it’s used. The first thing to determine is whether or not the government is actually behind the terrorist threat.
This kind of thing is inevitable when the governing rubric is altered from being one that advocates for Law AND Order to one that is based on forcing the people into having to choose between Law OR Order.
The former still allows for Democracy to flourish; the latter is a precursor to Tyranny.