WASHINGTON – The FBI violated the law in collecting thousands of U.S. telephone records during the Bush administration, The Washington Post reported Monday.
Citing internal memos and interviews, the Post said the FBI invoked nonexistent terrorism emergencies or persuaded phone companies to provide information as it illegally gathered more than 2,000 records between 2002 and 2006.
The bureau said in 2007 that it had improperly obtained some phone records, and the Justice Department inspector general is expected to release a report this month detailing the extent of the problem.
FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni told the Post that agents technically violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which was enacted in 1986, by citing nonexistent emergencies to collect records. "We should have stopped those requests from being made that way," she said.
Documents obtained by the Post show that FBI managers as high as the assistant director level approved the emergency requests. Caproni said FBI Director Robert Mueller did not know about the requests until late 2006 or early 2007, after the inspector general's investigation had begun.
Caproni told the Post that the bureau will await the inspector general's report before deciding whether disciplinary action is warranted.All you can think is a click away is that type of a blog which brings you a lot of stuff which means that this blog is easy for you to entertain yourselves. This blog has a lot of stuff that is usefull for people around the world. This blog is about hottest informations and reviews all you need and how you implement in it as well. Share and enjoy God bless you all.