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From Los Angeles Times

National security and a less-restrained FBI

The FBI is downplaying changes in its rules. But they add up to a substantial expansion of its power to monitor Americans.

by Julian Sanchez

June 27, 2011

Less than three years after the last major revision of its domestic surveillance guidelines, the FBI is preparing to loosen its restrictions on monitoring Americans. If this is not halted, we might find our privacy eroded beyond repair.

Agents are already free to search the public Internet and the federal government's vast and growing databases for information on groups or individuals — even if they aren't suspected of wrongdoing — without approval from a supervisor. Under rules implemented in 2008, they can go still further, digging up information in broader commercial databases, or consulting state and local law enforcement records, provided they open an "assessment." That isn't the same as an "investigation," which requires grounds for suspicion of criminal activity, but opening an assessment means that agents must at least create a paper trail and identify a legitimate purpose for their inquiries.

In 2008, we were told these rules would give the FBI the flexibility it needed to "proactively" ferret out national security threats. Now the FBI says these lax limits on its power are still too cumbersome: The next edition of the bureau's operational manual will give agents leeway to search all those databases with no approval or explanation, without opening an assessment and creating a paper trail.

We've heard the complaint about "cumbersome" record-keeping before. According to a 2010 report from the Office of the Inspector General, FBI analysts refused to use an electronic system that would track demands for sensitive phone and Internet records, on the grounds that entering all that data was too burdensome. In reality, the inspector general found, employees were engaged in "widespread and serious misuse" of domestic spying authorities and sought to avoid oversight and accountability.

As the report noted, the lack of record-keeping means we may never know the full extent of the abuses, or even the true scale of legitimate spying. One thing is clear, however: The more snooping that is done without a paper trail, the less likely it is that abuses will be caught when they occur.

The change in the rules will remove a crucial deterrent for any of the 14,000 FBI employees who might be tempted to use their government access to all kinds of databases for improper personal ends, or to flout rules prohibiting religious, racial and political profiling. This is no hypothetical concern: Shortly after the new guidelines were announced, a former CIA official alleged that the Bush administration had asked the spy agency to dig up dirt on academic and blogger Juan Cole, whose fierce criticism of the war in Iraq earned the ire of the White House.

The new manual will also give agents who have opened assessments greater authority to employ physical surveillance teams. If the FBI thinks you might make a useful informant, agents will be free to dig through your garbage in hopes of finding embarrassing trash that might encourage you to cooperate. And they will be able to do this without first having to show any evidence that you are engaged in wrongdoing.

The FBI, predictably, is downplaying the changes in its rulebook, characterizing them as "clarifications" and "tweaks." But all these tweaks add up to a substantial expansion of the FBI's power to monitor innocent Americans — power Congress wisely curtailed in the 1970s in light of the bureau's ugly history of spying on political dissidents. The law set broad limits on the most intrusive investigative techniques, such as wiretaps, but the details of who could be investigated and how were largely left to executive branch regulation. As statutory restraints on surveillance have been peeled back over the last decade, Americans have been asked to rely more than ever on those internal rules to check abuses.

Much of the growth of the surveillance state over the last decade has slid under the radar precisely because it's been done piecemeal. For example, the USA Patriot Act greatly expanded the FBI's ability to use what are called national security letters to obtain sensitive records without a court order. The letters are akin to subpoenas, demanding information about financial, phone or Internet transactions. When Congress granted this power to the agency, it was limited to "full investigations" based on specific evidence of a crime or security threat. But later the Justice Department quietly changed the rules to permit national security letters to be used in preliminary investigations based on mere suspicion. Within a few years, most of the letters were issued as part of such preliminary investigations.

In an era in which an unprecedented quantity of information about our daily activities is stored electronically and is retrievable with a mouse click, internal checks on the government's power to comb those digital databases are more important than ever. That's why Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) have asked the FBI to delay implementation of the new rules until the Senate Judiciary Committee can be briefed on the changes. But they should go further, as their colleague Jon Tester (D-Mont.) has done, and insist that the current rules already give the government more than enough leeway to snoop on innocent Americans.

If we aren't willing to say enough is enough, our privacy will slip away one tweak at a time.

Julian Sanchez is a research fellow at the Cato Institute and the author of "Leashing the Surveillance State: How to Reform Patriot Act Surveillance Authorities."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-sanchez-fbi-20110627,0,43894,print.story

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ATF and Congress under the gun

The agency failed in a border operation that let guns fall into criminals' hands. But Congress has failed to adopt sensible laws to prevent mass 'straw purchases' of arms destined for use in crimes.

June 27, 2011

A congressional subcommittee has spent much of the last month investigating how a border security operation code named "Fast and Furious" allowed hundreds of guns to fall into the hands of criminals on both sides of the Mexican border.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives launched Fast and Furious in 2009 as part of a program to track guns sold in the United States to Mexican drug cartels. Agents were assigned to monitor some 2,000 guns that were sold to "straw purchasers" who knowingly bought weapons intended for use by others. The agency did not intercept the guns and later lost track of about 1,700 of them. Some of the guns eventually turned up at crime scenes in both countries, including two found at the site in Arizona where a federal Border Patrol agent was killed.

Buying dozens of guns at a time is legal in many states, including Arizona and Texas. But lying on a form at a gun shop about who will own the gun is a crime.

Congress is rightfully angry that the operation went awry, and it should demand an explanation. The ATF must be held accountable and must provide answers.

But it is worth noting that the ATF is charged with an impossible mission: enforcing weak laws in a nation awash in firearms, where even the most modest attempts to regulate or prevent mass straw purchases invite accusations of infringements on 2nd Amendment rights from the gun lobby.

Consider that in 2006 the ATF came under congressional scrutiny for attempting to crack down on straw purchases at Virginia gun shows. That operation had been launched in response to a rise in homicides in the state. Agents traced about 400 guns recovered from crime scenes back to Virginia gun shows, according to congressional testimony. ATF officers who attended the shows and conducted residency checks to verify that interested buyers provided accurate information were later accused of harassing legitimate gun owners.

If Congress wants to stop mass straw purchases and stem the flow of guns to Mexican drug cartels, it ought to begin by confirming a permanent ATF director. The agency has been rudderless for nearly five years, largely because the National Rifle Assn. has publicly opposed nominees, including President Obama's pick, Andrew Traver, who currently heads the ATF's Chicago field office.

Federal lawmakers might also consider limiting the number of guns an individual can buy. In California, for example, a person can only buy one handgun a month.

The ATF should be held accountable for Fast and Furious, but Congress and the White House are responsible for letting the agency drift, and for failing to adopt sensible laws to prevent mass straw purchases.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-guns-20110627,0,87556,print.story

From Google News

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TSA stands by officers after pat-down of elderly woman in Florida

(CNN) -- The Transportation Security Administration stood by its security officers Sunday after a Florida woman complained that her cancer-stricken, 95-year-old mother was patted down and forced to remove her adult diaper while going through security.

Reports of the incident took hold in social media, with scores of comments on the topic and reposts appearing hourly on Twitter Sunday afternoon.

The TSA released a statement Sunday defending its agents' actions at the Northwest Florida Regional Airport.

"While every person and item must be screened before entering the secure boarding area, TSA works with passengers to resolve security alarms in a respectful and sensitive manner," the federal agency said. "We have reviewed the circumstances involving this screening and determined that our officers acted professionally and according to proper procedure."

TSA pat downs 6-year-old child

Jean Weber told CNN's Fredricka Whitfield on Sunday that the security officers may have been procedurally correct, but she still does not believe they were justified, especially given her mother's frail condition.

"If this is your procedure -- which I do understand -- I also feel that your procedure needs to be changed," she said.

Weber said the two were traveling June 18 from northwest Florida to Michigan, so her mother could move in with relatives before eventually going to an assisted living facility.

"My mother is very ill, she has a form of leukemia," Weber said. "She had a blood transfusion the week before, just to bolster up her strength for this travel."

While going through security, the 95-year-old was taken by a TSA officer into a glassed-in area, where a pat-down was performed, Weber said. An agent told Weber "they felt something suspicious on (her mother's) leg and they couldn't determine what it was" -- leading them to take her into a private, closed room.

Soon after, Weber said, a TSA agent came out and told her that her mother's Depend undergarment was "wet and it was firm, and they couldn't check it thoroughly." The mother and daughter left to find a bathroom, at the TSA officer's request, to take off the adult diaper.

Weber said she burst into tears during the ordeal, forcing her own pat-down and other measures in accordance with TSA protocol. But she said her mother, a nurse for 65 years, "was very calm" despite being bothered by the fact that she had to go through the airport without underwear.

Eventually, Weber said she asked for her mother to be whisked away to the boarding gate without her, because their plane was scheduled to leave in two minutes and Weber was still going through security.

By this weekend, the 95-year-old woman -- who was not identified by name -- was doing "fine" in Michigan, where her niece and her family "was treating her like royalty because they love her so much."

"My mother is a trouper," Weber said.

This is not the first time that the TSA's pat-downs of passengers have come under fire, nor the first time that the agency has rallied behind its officers and policy.

Last year, the administration announced it was ramping up the use of full-body scanning and pat-downs to stop nonmetallic threats, including explosives, from getting on planes. The goal is to head off attacks such as the one allegedly attempted in Christmas 2009 by Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, who allegedly had a bomb sewn into his underwear on a flight from the Netherlands to Michigan.

The TSA estimates that only 3% of passengers are subjected to pat-downs -- and then only after they have set off a metal detector or declined to step into a full-body scanner. Yet the new policy has triggered an uproar online and in airports, from a relatively small but vocal number of travelers who feel their rights and privacy were being violated.

But the federal safety agency hasn't backed down, making some adjustments but no major changes to its policy.

"Every traveler is a critical partner in TSA's efforts to keep our skies safe," Administrator John Pistole, who ordered the new approach, said last fall. "And I know and appreciate that the vast majority of Americans recognize and respect the important work we do."

More recently, outrage erupted over a video-recorded pat-down of a 6-year-old passenger last April at New Orleans' airport. The video, which was posted on YouTube, shows the girl protesting the search by a female security officer at first, though she complies quietly while it is underway.

Pistole addressed this controversy at a Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee meeting last week, explaining the pat-down was ordered because the child had moved while passing through a body imaging machine. He told committee members that "we have changed the policy (so) that there'll be repeated efforts made to resolve that without a pat-down."

The next day, TSA spokesman Greg Soule said that the new policy -- which will apply to children age 12 and younger -- is in the process of being rolled out. It will give security officers "more options," but does not eliminate pat-downs as one of them.

"This decision will ultimately reduce -- though not eliminate -- pat-downs," Soule said.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/06/26/florida.tsa.incident/

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