All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
We're here on chaos radio, Austin and the Liberty radio network.
Our next guest is Mark Rumold from the electronic frontier foundation, and they've got a massive new report out called patterns of misconduct, FBI intelligence violations from 2001 to 2008.
Mark Rumold is the report's author or at least primary author.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you.
I'm very happy to have you here.
Yeah.
Thanks a lot.
All right.
So, um, am I right that right there in the title, you're saying intelligence violations so that this means not the criminal division, just the intelligence side, or it's still all mixed up here, right?
Uh, this is only intelligence violations.
Okay.
And then, but that really matters because these divisions are separate within the FBI and the intelligence division has a much lower threshold of evidence in the law, uh, that must be satisfied before they can proceed in various ways, correct?
Right.
There's, you know, they're completely distinct rules for, uh, you know, regular criminal domestic investigations versus intelligence investigations, which include, you know, counterintelligence, uh, domestic spying, domestic terrorism, international terrorism.
So like, for example, um, probable cause for a regular search warrant would be one thing.
But, uh, when it comes to, uh, searching someone who's identified as tied to a foreign terrorist organization, there doesn't have to be probable cause about what they're doing necessarily.
Just that the tie is, there is enough, a reasonable suspicion or something like that.
Right.
Is that all any, any type of, uh, search of someone involved in, you know, international terrorism or international spying is authorized through the FISC court, um, the foreign intelligence surveillance court.
And they, they definitely operate on different, uh, principles and different standards for, uh, what, what constitutes, um, grounds for searches.
All right.
So now, uh, just yesterday in the house of representatives, uh, uh, some of the, uh, freshmen Republicans, the tea party types joined up with some of the Democrats and they, uh, I guess from the FBI's point of view or just department's point of view failed to approve, uh, or reauthorize parts of the Patriot Act, uh, which now then will be set to expire on February the 28th.
Can you tell us specifically about what those provisions were?
Yeah.
So the three provisions that were, uh, set to expire are the roving wire tab provision with section two Oh six, um, the lone wolf provision and the business records provision under section two 15.
And so, isn't that incredible?
Did you ever think that would happen?
That Congress would actually not reauthorize part of their, just talking last week about let's make it permanent.
Let's get rid of all sunsets and reauthorizations forever from now on.
And now here they failed to even get the thing passed.
Right?
Well, I, it was surprising.
Um, but I think ultimately it may be a bit of an empty victory because it was, they, they tried to pass the bill under something called suspension calendar, which is basically where you spend debate.
Um, there's a, I think the debate on the bill is limited to 20 minutes, but in, uh, in exchange for the shortened debate period, there's a higher threshold for passing the bill.
So they needed a two thirds majority to pass the bill.
And they only fell seven votes short of that, which means, you know, had they, had they passed it under, you know, regular debate rules, they would have had enough votes to pass it.
Right.
It sounds like by far they would have, but that also shows that they're scared to have a debate about it.
That's good.
Right.
No, I, I certainly think, uh, that is good.
And also, you know, the suspension calendar, they generally reserve bills for that, that are uncontroversial.
So the fact that it didn't pass shows that there, you know, there is some controversy about it.
I mean, obviously there's controversy about it, but there's, there are, uh, congressmen and congresswomen who, who, you know, don't feel comfortable with the provisions of the Patriot Act.
All right.
Well, I'm sorry for procrastinating.
It says here that you guys at the Electronic Frontier Foundation sued Uncle Sam, as they call him.
And, uh, you got, uh, 2,500 pages of documents about, uh, the FBI's investigations of their own violations of, uh, which going beyond the Patriot Act, uh, by far, it sounds like here.
Um, but, uh, my first question about that actually is a specific one.
Uh, somewhere it says 800 violations, uh, of laws, executive orders, or other regulations, et cetera.
But then, uh, you say up to 3,000 different violations just of the national security letters and even more violations of the FISA statute, et cetera.
So I was wondering if you could clear up my confusion about just how many, uh, crimes that they report themselves here in this paperwork.
Yeah, sure.
So, um, you know, the history of it is a little complicated.
There are a lot of audits, a lot of, you know, a lot of reports that have been issued about FBI and intelligence violations since 9-11.
Um, the, the 800 number that you, that you quoted is from the 2,500 pages of documents that we received through our FOIA request, um, those documents constituted reports made by the FBI to the Intelligence Oversight Board, which is, uh, exec, it's a presidential, um, body that is supposed to oversee all intelligence, um, within the 2,500 pages of documents, there were 800 specific reports to the IOP.
Um, over the years, there have been a number of reports done by the inspector general, um, and audits done by the FBI themselves that have investigated the use of NSLs.
Um, those reports have found that as many as 6,400 NSL violations may have occurred in, in an audit covering just a four year period.
Um, and then finally, we, we suggested that as many as 40,000 violations may have occurred during that entire, during, uh, the almost 10 years since 9-11.
Wow.
Um, well, so when you say 40,000 violations, I mean, that's a big number, but that means, um, you know, that many different people being violated.
And are we talking outright walking all over the fourth amendment here, or this is just a bunch of technical bureaucratic snafus or what?
Well, I mean, I guess it, I guess it all depends on, uh, you know, how you define the types of violations that, that have occurred.
Well, I define powers narrowly and rights broadly.
Fair enough.
Um, so in the reports that we looked at, there were, there were basically three different types of violations that, that we saw occurring with a pretty great frequency.
The first were, were violations of the FBI's own internal, um, kind of investigation, uh, guidelines.
Um, the second type of violation that we saw were violations of the FBI, the NFL authority, and the third type were kind of a, you know, even calling it a type is kind of a, it's kind of a misnomer, but the third category were just violations of constitution of FISA and of other laws governing investigations.
All right.
So, well, let's take those in order then.
This internal oversight board sounds like a joke, right?
It sounds like the local police accountability board and whatever town you live in that has no power and is a big joke, but apparently the FBI has been forced somehow internally to actually, uh, turn over some of their guilt to these people.
Well, right.
Um, so the intelligence oversight board was established after, after Watergate, there were a series of congressional committee, uh, reports that found, you know, widespread abuse and the intelligence community in that during the Bush administration, uh, president Bush failed to appoint people to the IOB.
Um, he passed a few executive orders or signed a few executive orders that, uh, kind of weakened the oversight role played by the IOB.
And, um, actually right now, uh, president Obama hasn't disclosed whether he's appointed anyone to the IOB, but in general, the IOB is the kind of the link between, uh, intelligence agencies and the president in terms of intelligence violations.
All right.
And, um, so basically, uh, well, I guess, so tell us, did you know, the violations, how bad are the violations just of those rules that say they're supposed to turn over their other violations to these people?
Right.
Cause that's a big part of this is the abuse of the accountability, even within the just department, right?
Sure.
So, so the IOB isn't a part of the justice department at all.
The IOB is an independent presidential, uh, board created by the president.
Oh, I see.
It's supposed to serve as, as kind of a liaison between the intelligence communities and the president in terms of oversight of intelligence investigations.
Um, so what I think you're getting at is the violations that occurred, um, as a result of the FBI violating their own internal investigative guidelines.
Um, you know, these guidelines, the violations, there's nothing, you know, there's no smoking gun.
Um, the FBI kind of treats them as, you know, technical violations, but in, in reality, the guidelines were put in place in the first place in order to protect civil liberties.
So when the FBI is just kind of treating them as technical violations, it kind of shows a, a bigger problem within the bureau, um, with regards to guarding and really respecting civil liberties.
All right.
So now let's get into the meat of this, which is the abuse of the national security letters.
And then I guess, first of all, could you address perhaps whether maybe one would be reasonable to think that national security letters themselves are abusive of the constitution, for example?
Um, I think it would depend on the investigation that they were used in.
I mean, I'm not so sure if a national security letter was issued for someone living outside of the United States, if that would necessarily abuse the, violate the fourth amendment.
But I mean, there certainly are aspects of national security letters that are, that have been held unconstitutional.
For example, the gag order that accompanies every national security letter, which basically, uh, restricts the, the entity or the company or the organization receiving the letter from disclosing it to anyone.
Right.
Or even the librarian, right?
Or, or even the library.
Right.
So, um, but these national security letters basically means, I mean, assuming that it's anything but, you know, a Songbin Law Enforcement or, uh, somebody overseas or whatever, like you're saying, um, this is just a cop writing a warrant for himself.
And you say you got thousands of these cases where they're abusing these.
Does that mean just American citizens are having all their financial records seized for no reason at all or that kind of thing?
Um, you know, it, it, it's tough to tell.
It's, it's really tough to tell.
Um, really?
That's not in the documents what the abuses are?
Well, what some of the things that are in the documents, for example, are when the FBI issues an NSL for, you know, credit reports, but sites, um, the Right to Financial Privacy Act, which is an entirely different statutory justification for an NSL, uh, that, that's one example of what's in the documents.
I mean, the, the world of NSL violations that are represented in the documents is, is pretty astounding.
All right.
Well, so, um, and now what about FISA?
If it's a FISA violation, does that mean that it's something where the, the federal foreign intelligence surveillance court actually came in a session, ruled you can do this, but not that, but then they did that anyway, kind of a situation?
You know, again, and especially in the, in that, what we, what we kind of call the third category of violations, it was extremely difficult to tell what the violation was.
Um, one example that we note in, uh, in our report is if they, if they four page report to the IOB, um, most, most reports to the IOB, for example, are about two paragraphs long.
So this one, four, four pages long, and one of the only lines of text that isn't redacted in the entire four pages is the scope of the FBI agent, uh, misconduct warrants reporting to the IOB.
Nice.
So I, you know, I wish I could provide you more details about, you know, the FISA violations or, uh, the constitutional violations, but in general, they're very redacted.
There were examples.
Sounds like they're abusing their secrecy powers too.
Uh, yes.
I mean, there's certainly examples.
Um, actually just within the release that the FBI gave to us, they accidentally released two identical reports and the reports had different levels of redaction for the same report.
So we actually have evidence to compare and contrast.
What'd you find there?
Well, we actually have evidence that, uh, you know, they're inconsistently and fairly arbitrarily applying their, uh, their legal justifications for withholding.
Will you be able to use that against them in court somehow?
You know, we're, we're not at that stage in the litigation at this point, but, uh, you know, hopefully, hopefully it will help, but I really can't be sure at this point.
All right.
Well, I hate to waste your time with a silly question here, Mark, but is Congress doing anything about this?
Well, I mean, not passing the reauthorization on the first try is, is evidence that the people are at least starting to think seriously about it.
Um, I guess I was thinking more in terms of like one crusading committee chairman or something like that, you know, uh, actual investigation or accountability or something.
Right.
Well, Senator, uh, Leahy has proposed a bill to reauthorize the portions of the Patriot Act similar to the one that was in, that failed in the house.
But in his bill, there's some actual accountability and some oversight built in.
So.
All right.
Well, it's very good work.
I appreciate the fact that you guys are suing the government for these secrets.
It's some of the most important work going on in the country right now.
Everybody, that's Mark Rummel from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Thank you very much for your time on the show today.
All right.
Thanks, Scott.
