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Detroit Free Press – October 25, 2005
Documents suggest FBI unlawfully spied
BY NIRAJ WARIKOO
The FBI may have improperly spied on a number of Americans, including at least one person in metro Detroit, according to federal documents released Monday.
The documents offer a look into the government's secret surveillance of Americans -- an issue of great concern among metro Detroit's Arab-American and Muslim communities.
According to 93 pages of reports from the FBI, some agents failed to follow federal guidelines as they monitored e-mails, bank records and subjects in cases related to national security.
The documents were obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, based in Washington, D.C., through a request made under the Freedom of Information Act. The center released the documents Monday and mailed a letter expressing concerns about government abuse under the Patriot Act to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.
In the metro Detroit case, FBI agents tracked a person for years but failed to properly report their surveillance with the Department of Justice, as required by law. The heavily redacted report does not mention the subject's name or what that person was suspected of doing.
Local Arab-American attorneys who work on civil rights cases say the documents confirm that the Patriot Act, passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, is leading to abuse.
"This is a clear indication that when there are no checks and balances, when there is no scrutiny, things like this happen," said Dearborn attorney Nabih Ayad, who has represented Arab Americans in cases dealing with national security issues. "This concerns me very much. ... The government can basically be looking at someone without them knowing about it."
According to the documents, there were about a dozen cases from 2002 to 2004 in which the FBI general counsel office passed on possible violations to the Intelligence Oversight Board, a federal agency that looks at the legality of intelligence gathering. Carter noted that the FBI conducts thousands of investigations every year.
In addition to the metro Detroit case, the documents describe possible violations by federal agents in Pittsburgh and Indianapolis.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center asked for the documents to examine how the FBI has used the Patriot Act in recent years. The law gave the FBI greater powers of surveillance, and some provisions are up for review by Congress.
The center's letter to the senators asked them to consider the documents as they debate the Patriot Act. The documents, the letter said, "suggest that there may be at least 13 instances of unlawful intelligence investigations that were never disclosed to Congress." ….
http://www.freep.com/news/metro/spy25e_20051025.htm
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