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For Immediate Release
January, 19 2010, 02:04pm EDT
Contact:
Mandy Simon, (202) 675-2312; media@dcaclu.org
Robyn Shepherd, (212) 519-7829 or 549-2666; media@aclu.org
FBI Illegally Gathered Phone Records And Misused National Security Letters
Congress Must Curb NSL Abuse Through Patriot Act Revisions
WASHINGTON
According
to a report in the Washington Post today, the FBI routinely claimed
false terrorism emergencies to illegally collect the phone records of
Americans for four years of the Bush administration by abusing an
already expansive Patriot Act power. Using "exigent letters," or
emergency letters, to gain private records for investigations when no
emergency existed, the FBI seemingly violated the Electronic
Communications Privacy Act. The FBI also routinely issued National
Security Letters (NSLs) after the fact in an attempt to legitimize the
use of exigent letters.
The
NSL statute, widely broadened with the passage of the Patriot Act in
2001, allows the FBI to secretly demand personal records about innocent
customers from Internet Service Providers (ISPs), communications
service providers, financial institutions and credit reporting agencies
without suspicion or prior judicial approval. The statute also allows
the FBI to bar NSL recipients from disclosing anything about the record
demand. Congress recently extended three unrelated provisions of the
Patriot Act set to expire last year until February 28, 2010. There are
several bills in both the House and Senate that address those
provisions as well as the NSL statute.
In 2004, the ACLU and
New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of an ISP that
the FBI served with an NSL. Because the FBI imposed a gag order on the
ISP, the lawsuit was filed under seal. Although the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in 2008 that the gag order
provisions were unconstitutional, the "John Doe" NSL recipient in that
case remains gagged.
The following can be attributed to Michael Macleod-Ball, Acting Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office:
"The
FBI was given broad authority to issue NSLs in the Patriot Act, and to
flout even the minor privacy protections within that statute shows a
blatant disregard for the civil liberties of Americans. The FBI has a
notorious reputation for being unable to police itself and, in this
instance, its internal oversight controls clearly failed. Even after
being warned by their own lawyers, FBI supervisors continued sending
exigent letters even though no emergency existed and they had no
statutory authority for such letters.
FBI was given broad authority to issue NSLs in the Patriot Act, and to
flout even the minor privacy protections within that statute shows a
blatant disregard for the civil liberties of Americans. The FBI has a
notorious reputation for being unable to police itself and, in this
instance, its internal oversight controls clearly failed. Even after
being warned by their own lawyers, FBI supervisors continued sending
exigent letters even though no emergency existed and they had no
statutory authority for such letters.
"The
agency has shown time and again its contempt for internal guidelines
and restrictions, even when someone is looking over its shoulder. Worse
still is the evidence that higher-ups at the agency attempted to cover
up their wrongdoing. It is not enough to for the FBI to claim these
practices have ended; its ability to file exigent letters must be
narrowed and subject to increased oversight. With the reauthorization
of Patriot Act authorities now pending, Congress has an opportunity to
narrow the use of NSL powers and help avoid such abuses in the future.
Given what we now know, it would be unthinkable not to make such
changes in the law now while it's possible."
agency has shown time and again its contempt for internal guidelines
and restrictions, even when someone is looking over its shoulder. Worse
still is the evidence that higher-ups at the agency attempted to cover
up their wrongdoing. It is not enough to for the FBI to claim these
practices have ended; its ability to file exigent letters must be
narrowed and subject to increased oversight. With the reauthorization
of Patriot Act authorities now pending, Congress has an opportunity to
narrow the use of NSL powers and help avoid such abuses in the future.
Given what we now know, it would be unthinkable not to make such
changes in the law now while it's possible."
The following can be attributed to Melissa Goodman, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project:
"The
FBI showed flagrant duplicity in obtaining thousands of phone records
over several years without any legal basis or justification for doing
so. The FBI must be forthcoming and release information about its use
of exigent letters and NSLs in order to hold accountable those who
contributed to what clearly amounts to a systemic abuse of power. The
FBI should also lift unnecessary and unjustified gag orders that
continue to silence thousands of NSL recipients from speaking out about
the FBI's misuse of this intrusive record demand power, including our
John Doe client who has now been gagged for nearly six years."
FBI showed flagrant duplicity in obtaining thousands of phone records
over several years without any legal basis or justification for doing
so. The FBI must be forthcoming and release information about its use
of exigent letters and NSLs in order to hold accountable those who
contributed to what clearly amounts to a systemic abuse of power. The
FBI should also lift unnecessary and unjustified gag orders that
continue to silence thousands of NSL recipients from speaking out about
the FBI's misuse of this intrusive record demand power, including our
John Doe client who has now been gagged for nearly six years."
To learn more about the Patriot Act and the ACLU's work to reform it, go to: www.reformthepatriotact.org
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 and is our nation's guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
(212) 549-2666LATEST NEWS
'Unforgivable': FEMA Missed Thousands of Calls from Texas Flood Victims After Noem Fired Contractors
"They are intentionally breaking government—even the parts that help us when we are deep in crisis," said Sen. Chris Murphy.
Jul 12, 2025
Outrage continues to grow against U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem over her response to the deadly floods that ravaged Texas last week.
According to a Friday report from The New York Times, more than two-thirds of phone calls to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) from flood victims went unanswered after Noem allowed hundreds of contractors to be laid off on July 5, just a day after the nightmare storm.
According to The Times, this dramatically hampered the ability of the agency to respond to calls from survivors in the following days:
On July 5, as floodwaters were starting to recede, FEMA received 3,027 calls from disaster survivors and answered 3,018, or roughly 99.7 percent, the documents show. Contractors with four call center companies answered the vast majority of the calls.
That evening, however, Noem did not renew the contracts with the four companies, and hundreds of contractors were fired, according to the documents and the person briefed on the matter.
The next day, July 6, FEMA received 2,363 calls and answered 846, or roughly 35.8 percent, according to the documents. And on Monday, July 7, the agency fielded 16,419 calls and answered 2,613, or around 15.9 percent, the documents show.
Calling is one of the primary ways that flood victims apply for aid from the disaster relief agency. But Noem would wait until July 10—five days later—to renew the contracts of the people who took those phone calls.
"Responding to less than half of the inquiries is pretty horrific," Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, told The Times.
"Put yourself in the shoes of a survivor: You've lost everything, you're trying to find out what's insured and what's not, and you’re navigating multiple aid programs," he added. "One of the most important services in disaster recovery is being able to call someone and walk through these processes and paperwork."
The lapse is a direct result of a policy introduced by Noem last month, which required any payments made by FEMA above $100,000 to be directly approved by her before taking effect. Noem, who has said she wants to eliminate FEMA entirely, described it as a way of limiting "waste, fraud, and abuse."
Under this policy, Noem allowed other critical parts of the flood response to wait for days as well. Earlier this week, multiple officials within FEMA told CNN that she waited more than 72 hours to authorize the deployment of search and rescue teams and aerial imaging.
Following The Times' piece, DHS put out a statement claiming that "NO ONE was left without assistance, and every call was responded to urgently."
"When a natural disaster strikes, phone calls surge, and wait times can subsequently increase," DHS said. "Despite this expected influx, FEMA's disaster call center responded to every caller swiftly and efficiently, ensuring no one was left without assistance. No call center operators were laid off or fired."
This is undercut, however, by internal emails also obtained by The Times, which showed FEMA officials becoming frustrated and blaming the DHS Secretary for the lack of contracts. One official wrote in a July 8 email to colleagues: "We still do not have a decision, waiver, or signature from the DHS Secretary."
Democratic lawmakers were already calling for investigations into Noem's response to the floods before Friday. They also sought to look into how the Trump administration's mass firings of FEMA employees, as well as employees of the National Weather Service (NWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) may have hampered the response.
Following The Times' revelations, outrage has reached a greater fever pitch.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) called it "unforgivable and unforgettable" and an "inexcusable lapse in top leadership."
"Sec. Noem shows that dismantling FEMA impacts real people in real time," he said. "It hurts countless survivors & increases recovery costs."
In response to the news, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) simply wrote that "Kristi Noem must resign now."
Others pointed out that Noem has often sought to justify abolishing FEMA by characterizing it as slow and ineffectual. They suggested her dithering response was deliberate.
"She broke it on purpose," said Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) in an interview on MSNBC. "So that when it fails this summer, she can say, 'Oh, see, we told you—FEMA doesn't work.'"
"It's not really incompetence because they know what they are doing," said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). "They are intentionally breaking government—even the parts that help us when we are deep in crisis."
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LA Judge Orders ICE to Stop 'Indiscriminately Rounding Up' Immigrants Using Racial Profiling
"No matter the color of their skin, what language they speak, or where they work, everyone is guaranteed constitutional rights to protect them from unlawful stops," said an attorney with the ACLU of Southern California.
Jul 12, 2025
A federal judge in Los Angeles has ordered the Trump administration to stop carrying out indiscriminate immigration raids in the city and its surrounding areas, citing its use of "unconstitutional tactics," including racial profiling and denying the right to an attorney.
Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California wrote that there is a "mountain of evidence" that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents are "indiscriminately rounding up numerous individuals without reasonable suspicion" in violation of the Fourth Amendment during their "roving patrols" in the region.
She issued two temporary restraining orders against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). One bars agents from targeting individuals based on race or ethnicity; speaking Spanish or English with an accent; presence in specific locations such as bus stops, car washes, or agricultural sites; or type of employment. The second requires DHS to provide access to attorneys for those who are arrested.
The case was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other local legal organizations on behalf of five plaintiffs who said their rights were violated by immigration agents.
According to the complaint:
The raids in this district follow a common, systematic pattern. Individuals with brown skin are approached or pulled aside by unidentified federal agents, suddenly and with a show of force, and made to answer questions about who they are and where they are from. If they hesitate, attempt to leave, or do not answer the questions to the satisfaction of the agents, they are detained, sometimes tackled, handcuffed, and/or taken into custody.
In these interactions, agents typically have no prior information about the individual and no warrant of any kind. If agents make an arrest, contrary to federal law, they do not make any determination of whether a person poses a risk of flight before a warrant can be obtained. Also contrary to federal law, the agents do not identify themselves or explain why the individual is being arrested.
Two of the plaintiffs were U.S. citizens.
One of them, a dual U.S. and Mexican citizen, said he was questioned and detained by unidentified officers on three separate occasions while working at a car wash in Orange County. Agents insisted that his passport was fake and repeatedly asked if he was American.
Another U.S. citizen was told he was arrested because he "looked like an illegal alien." Agents with military-style rifles and handguns repeatedly asked him, "What hospital were you born at?" When he could not answer the question, an officer grabbed him and shoved him against a metal fence. After he showed the officers his Real ID, he says they took it and never returned it to him.
"No matter the color of their skin, what language they speak, or where they work, everyone is guaranteed constitutional rights to protect them from unlawful stops," said Mohammad Tajsar, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Southern California.
"While it does not take a federal judge to recognize that marauding bands of masked, rifle-toting goons have been violating ordinary people’s rights throughout Southern California, we are hopeful that today’s ruling will be a step toward accountability for the federal government’s flagrant lawlessness that we have all been witnessing," he added.
Since early June, Southern California has been the epicenter of the Trump administration's "mass deportation" push, with thousands of immigrants detained—often by unidentified, masked agents—in sweeping raids that have traumatized Latino communities across the state.
Despite the administration publicizing the arrests of violent criminals, the vast majority of those arrested have no criminal history. More than 1,500 people have been disappeared, the ACLU said last week, "in order to meet arbitrary arrest quotas set by the Trump administration."
"Due process, access to counsel, dignity, and respect were not afforded to our loved ones, our friends, our neighbors as ICE plowed through our community in their obsessive, racially motivated quest for quotas," said Angelica Salas, executive director at Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA). "No one is above the law, and today’s decision reaffirms that President Trump and all its immigration enforcement apparatus must follow the Constitution."
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Israeli Settlers Beat American to Death in Illegally Occupied West Bank: Family, Health Ministry
"If President Trump will not even put America first when Israel murders American citizens, then this is truly an Israel First administration," said one U.S. group.
Jul 11, 2025
The Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Health and cousins of Sayfollah Musallat—also known as Saif al-Din Kamel Abdul Karim Musallat—said Friday that Israeli settlers beat the dual U.S.-Palestinian citizen to death while he was visiting family in the illegally occupied West Bank.
A spokesperson for the ministry, Annas Abu El Ezz, told Agence France-Press that 23-year-old Musallat "died after being severely beaten all over his body by settlers in the town of Sinjil, north of Ramallah, this afternoon."
Abdul Samad Abdul Aziz, from the nearby village of Al-Mazraa Al-Sharqiya, said that "the young man was injured and remained so for four hours. The [Israeli] army prevented us from reaching him and did not allow us to take him away."
"When we finally managed to reach him, he was taking his last breath," he added.
The Times of Israel reported that the "ministry later said a second man, 23-year-old Mohammad Shalabi, was fatally shot by settlers," and "there have been no arrests yet."
According to the Tel Aviv-based newspaper Haaretz, "The Israeli army said it was 'aware of reports' of the incident and that it was 'being looked into by the Shin Bet security service and Israel Police.'"
Zeteo's Prem Thakker spoke with two of Musallat's cousins, Fatmah Muhammad and another granted anonymity due to safety concerns. They said that he grew up in Port Charlotte, Florida, and arrived in June to visit family in the Palestinian town of al-Mazra'a ash-Sharqiya.
As Thakker detailed:
Muhammad described Musallat as "one of those kids that everyone loves" with a "beautiful heart," a "sweet, gentle kid, very genuine," everyone attests as funny and bright.
In Florida, he helped run a family ice cream shop, a place where his personality shone through, his family members said.
Muhammad and the other family source said that the entire Palestinian town where the family is from is devastated.
"There's no justice there. You can't call the police. You can't call the Israeli government. The murderers just get to walk away," Muhammad said.
Since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack, the Israel Defense Forces have killed over 57,800 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip—which has led to a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). During that time, IDF soldiers and Israeli settlers' sometimes deadly violence against Palestinians in the West Bank has also surged.
Additionally, despite the ICJ's July 2024 finding that Israel's occupation of Palestine is an illegal form of apartheid that must end as soon as possible, and Israeli settler colonization of the West Bank amounts to unlawful annexation, there are growing calls in Israel's government to formally annex the West Bank.
Musallat's death came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—a fugitive from the International Criminal Court accused of continuing the mass slaughter and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza to stay in power—returned to Israel after meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump and congressional leaders in Washington, D.C. this week.
Edward Ahmed Mitchell, national deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group in the United States, said in a Friday statement that "we strongly condemn these racist Israeli settlers, backed and enabled by the Netanyahu government, for beating an American citizen to death in the occupied West Bank."
"This murder is only the latest killing of an American citizen by illegal Israeli settlers or soldiers," he noted. "Every other murder of an American citizen has gone unpunished by the American government, which is why the Israeli government keeps wantonly killing American Palestinians and, of course, other Palestinians. If President Trump will not even put America first when Israel murders American citizens, then this is truly an Israel First administration."
According to Thakker: "Musallat is at least the seventh American killed in the West Bank, Gaza, or Lebanon since October 7, 2023, including six killed by Israeli forces. Earlier this week, Zeteo asked several Republican senators if they knew how many Americans had been killed by Israel in the last 21 months. None of them could answer."
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