Hold government, FBI accountable

3/14/07

It can be numbing to think of all the ways our government has overstepped its mandate and intruded into people’s lives over the past five years. Warrantless wiretapping, illegal searches, extraordinary rendition, enemy combatants — the list is unending, and the legal justifications grow more tortured as the years pass.
The latest jaw-dropper (already pushed aside by the news of White House involvement in the firing of federal prosecutors for political purposes) concerns the FBI’s overzealous use of its law enforcement powers. Granted the right to collect private information on American citizens who were not direct targets of an investigation, the bureau went far beyond its parameters, sifting through personal data on thousands of law-abiding citizens, according to a report released last week.
It was the Justice Department’s own inspector general who shed light on the abuse, and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III has declared himself “accountable” for the agency’s actions (although not so accountable that he plans to step down). The extra powers, provided in the extension of the Patriot Act and approved by Congress, were almost guaranteed to be abused, as they came with no new oversight and scant attention to limitations. Investigators simply had their way with the private information of ordinary citizens.
And there’s nothing insignificant about the scope of the abuse. An internal audit found nearly 10 percent of national security letters, a type of instant subpoena that allows the FBI to gather confidential information without a warrant, issued over a three-year period did not meet statutory requirements, and may have broken the law. With 19,000 letters issued in 2005, a number thought to be significantly underreported, there were countless cases of improper information-gathering from law-abiding citizens. This is abuse of power, and it must not stand.
The dangers of terrorism are real, and there are legitimate arguments to be made in favor of increased police powers. But if granted, these powers must be accompanied by increased accountability, and greater, not less, care must be taken that wider authority does not bring out-of-control law enforcement. Congress must hold the Justice Department and the FBI to account, demanding and providing greater oversight. And the White House, besieged on all fronts, must find a way to back the nation away from the guilty-until-proven-innocent presumption during what is, as we are constantly reminded, a time of war.