FBI Director Robert S. Mueller needs to be relieved of his position. The President needs to send a very clear message to the FBI, CIA, NSA etc. that while the Patriot Act is essential to national security, heads will roll at the highest level if that authority is abused--even if the abuse was only due to "shoddy record-keeping."The FBI improperly and, in some cases, illegally used the USA Patriot Act to
secretly obtain personal information about people in the United States,
underreporting for three years how often it forced businesses to turn over
customer data, a Justice Department audit concluded Friday.FBI agents sometimes demanded the data without proper authorization, according to a 126-page audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. At other times, the audit found, the FBI improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances. The audit blames agent error and shoddy record-keeping for the bulk of the problems and did not find any indication of criminal misconduct.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
FBI and the Patriot Act
According to the Associated Press:
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6 comments:
I think these FBI agents have been watching too much 24.
Can you put money on this kind of thing in Vegas? I'd bet every penny on the odds of Bush caring at all about this at 0%.
President Bush is a politician. He will care about what enough people make a stink about and I can't believe more people are not making a stink about this.
Democrats and Republicans can disagree about which provisions of the Patriot Act are good or dangerous, but everyone should agree that overstepping that authority should not be tolerated. A very clear message needs to be sent that directors who allow this to happen on their watch will not be directors anymore.
Unfortunately, people like you on the left will just use this as an excuse to bash Bush again, and Republicans on the Right will just lie low and hope it all blows over--and in the mean time, a clear message is being sent that agencies like the FBI can overstep their legal authority and everything will be OK if they just say, ooops, darn that paperwork!
Dennis, I actually agree with you on this one. My only question would be, why does every criticism of Bush get classified as "bashing"? How would you like to see criticism expressed so that it doesn't get called "bashing" by the right? Or should we just play along and not criticize at all, since apparently it's unpatriotic these days?
John, I'm not opposed to negative comments against the President (He sometimes earns them and I've made some pretty negative comments about him myself).
I guess I thought I was making an important point about the Patriot Act, American freedom, abuse of power, the FBI, etc. and you had absolutly nothing to contribute except to make a negative comment against the President. That just hit me the wrong way. Sorry for overreacting.
No problem. That was just my sarcastic, roundabout way of agreeing with you. I agreed with everything in your post, but I'm pessimistic that any consequences of substance will be seen.
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