| The Justice
Department has conducted an investigation, and issued a
shocking report stating that the FBI misused the powers given to them
under the USA Patriot Act. Namely, the bureau has been accused of
spying
on thousands of companies and citizens, and obtaining their
records without any justification, thus invading their privacy.
The bureau lacks the control management to assure that its agents were
acting within the rules and procedures to obtain the records using the
subpoenas without an approval from a judge. Simply speaking the agents
abused their powers and acted on their own discretion rather than
following the rules of the Patriot Act and the procedures set by the
FBI.
The director of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation - Robert S. Mueller III - called the press conference to
answer the privacy concerns and other issues raised in the report from
the Justice Department. He
said that somebody is going to accept the responsibility for these
faults and it's going to be him. Mr. Mueller acknowledged that their
agents misused the rights they had and that he will do all in his
power to make sure such actions will be controlled to make sure this
doesn't happen again.
The report states that the bureau has issued over twenty thousands
orders, formally called "security letters," for the information about
the businesses and individuals.
The FBI director said that the misuse of power was mainly due to
administrative errors without any malicious attempts, that the abuse
cases constituted only a small percentage of the total investigations,
and that no individual or business was harmed as a result of the
procedures. Mueller also added that those rare cases of misuse were
done in a terrorism filled tension after September 11 attacks.
Not all senators and media agree with Mueller's arguments though -
many members of congress, especially Democrats, said that such cases
show the need to verify FBI actions more than before, and despite
Mueller's statements the bureau did harm businesses and individuals by
infringing their privacy.
The FBI director said the misused Patriot Act and privacy issues will be of
paramount importance to him, and that he has no intention to resign
his post, but rather to correct address the issues raised in the
report and learn from the past mistakes. |
There's a big scandal surrounding the FBI. Turns out they have misused and abused the Patriot Act to spy on businesses and private citizens without any justification. The whole thing became known when the FBI released "their version" of the Paris Hilton famous tape.
