FBI spied on little kids for days at a time, documents reveal

Documents Obtained by EFF Reveal FBI Patriot Act Abuses
by Mark Rumold
EFF.org
Apr. 03, 2011

In yesterday's Senate Judiciary Hearing, "Oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation," FBI Director Robert Mueller testified about the Bureau's desire to extend three expiring provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act -- PATRIOT Section 215, authorizing secret court orders for the Internet and financial records of innocent Americans; the "lone wolf" wiretapping provision, which unconstitutionally allows foreign intelligence investigators to bypass traditional wiretapping protections and spy on people inside the U.S. who have no link to any foreign organization; and the "John Doe" roving wiretap provision, which allows blank-check wiretapping orders that don't identify the suspect or the particular phone or Internet connections to be tapped.

During the question and answer portion of Mueller's testimony, Senator Grassley asked the FBI Director: have "any of these three provisions been subject to any negative reports of finding abuse?" Mueller responded, "I'm not aware of any." Well, Director Mueller -- EFF is aware of some.

As part of EFF's FLAG Project, we issued a FOIA request for records of intelligence violations stemming from the FBI's use of the expiring provisions of the PATRIOT Act. In the FBI's response to our request, we uncovered evidence of multiple reports of potential violations (pdf); however, in typical FBI fashion, the reports are almost entirely redacted. As a result, the details of most of the violations remain secret. Nevertheless, by comparing the FBI's response to our PATRIOT Act request with the Bureau's response to another EFF FOIA request, the murky details of at least one potential violation involving PATRIOT provisions became more clear: the FBI, in a case where use of a "John Doe" roving wiretap was authorized, monitored the conversations of "young children" for "approximately" five days.

In documents obtained through EFF's PATRIOT Act request, an email with the subject "IOB database -- Roving Authority" references "Potential IOB Matter 2005-160," yet all details of the report were redacted.

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