ACLU: Military Skirting Law to Spy
NEW YORK - The military is using the FBI to skirt legal restrictions on domestic surveillance to obtain private records of Americans’ Internet service providers, financial institutions and telephone companies, the ACLU said Tuesday.
The American Civil Liberties Union based its conclusion on a review of more than 1,000 documents turned over by the Defense Department after it sued the agency last year for documents related to national security letters, or NSLs, investigative tools used to compel businesses to turn over customer information without a judge’s order or grand jury subpoena.
“Newly unredacted documents released today reveal that the Department of Defense is using the FBI to circumvent legal limits on its own NSL power,” said the ACLU, whose lawsuit was filed in Manhattan federal court.
ACLU lawyer Melissa Goodman said the documents the civil rights group studied “make us incredibly concerned.” She said it would be understandable if the military relied on help from the FBI on joint investigations, but not when the FBI was not involved in a probe.
The FBI referred requests for comment Tuesday to the Defense Department. A department spokesman, Air Force Lt. Col. Patrick Ryder, said in an e-mail that the department had made “focused, limited and judicious” use of the letters since Congress extended the capability to investigatory entities other than the FBI in 2001.
He said the department had acted legally in using a necessary investigatory tool and noted that “unusual financial activity of people affiliated with DoD can be an indication of potential espionage or terrorist-related activity.”
Ryder said the information in the ACLU claims came in part from an internal review of DoD’s use of the letters.
“We have since developed training and provided it to the services for their use,” he said.
He said that there was no law requiring it to track use of the letters but that the department had decided it was in its best interest to do so.
Goodman, a staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project, said the military is allowed to demand financial and credit records in certain instances but does not have the authority to get e-mail and phone records or lists of Web sites that people have visited. That is the kind of information that the FBI can get by using a national security letter, she said.
“That’s why we’re particularly concerned. The DoD may be accessing the kinds of records they are not allowed to get,” she said.
Goodman also noted that legal limits are placed on the Defense Department “because the military doing domestic investigations tends to make us leery.”
In other allegations, the ACLU said:
- The Navy’s use of the letters to demand domestic records has increased significantly since the Sept. 11 attacks.
- The military wrongly claimed its use of the letters was limited to investigating only Defense Department employees.
- The Defense Department has not kept track of how many national security letters the military issues or what information it obtained through the orders.
- The military provided misleading information to Congress and silenced letter recipients from speaking out about the records requests.
Goodman said Congress should provide stricter guidelines and meaningful oversight of how the military and FBI make national security letter requests.
“Any government agency’s ability to demand these kinds of personal, financial or Internet records in the United States is an intrusive surveillance power,” she said.
© 2008 The Associated Press.
It’s just a shame that our political leaders never thought to create a legally binding document– you know, a kind of manifesto, or even just a “bill”– guaranteeing inalienable rights to citizens that would prevent such insidious practices.
It would have to have the force of law, though, which is highly unlikely in the US of the 21st Century.
The military has trampled on the U.S. Bill of Rights.
The Military Dictator is above any law, foreign or domestic.
The writ of habeas corpus is murdered.
What is an unarmed citizen to do?
This citizen sure as hell will never vote for those thugs or either of their parties that have sold us down this river.
I fear this is just the beginning of the militarized corporatocracy’s use of data to build legal(formerly read as illegal) cases against any citizen/non-citizen who threatens them, or even impedes the making of profits for them, of them, and by them. Another terrorist attack on American soil will only accelerate the process, and the ACLU will become only a meaningless string of letters. Speaking truth to power will not resonate. They will simply overwhelm the media and the other estates with fabricated versions of their own truths.
Little Brother:
Um, the lawmakers actually DID, in fact, create a legally-binding document to prevent these “insidious practices.” It’s called the U.S. Constitution.
Or WAS. It has been shredded and destroyed, or outright ignored, piece by piece, Article by Article, for the last 8 years.
Welcome to the United Police States of America. It ain’t a joke folks. ‘Tis a fact.
Demonstorm - It’s obvious that Little Brother was being ironic.
“a “bill”– guaranteeing inalienable rights to citizens”
as in, Bill of Rights.
The mind-set of government is ‘America at war’. National Security trumps the Constitution.
Treason is the only path to ending this kind of domestic behavior. It is Treason and nothing less.
ibid. - The military provided misleading information to Congress and silenced letter recipients from speaking out about the records requests.
That could just as easily read:
- The military provided misleading information to Congress however the letter recipients scheduled to testify have gone into seclusion (dissapeared) and have not been heard from since. In light of the failure of the complaintants to show, Congress has decided to drop the matter and return to it’s normal agenda of bickering over pork barrel spending.
good god.
it’s bush’s illegal conduct that’s the treason.
it’s his trampling of the Constitution that’s the treason.
it’s his overturning of the rule of law that’s giving aid and comfort to the enemies of freedom and democracy.