MORE GOVERNMENT SPYING MISCONDUCT

The Electronic Frontier Foundation as been pursuing information regarding government misconduct by the CIA.  So far, information they have obained through the use of Freedom of Information Act requests, (FOIA), reveals:

• The Army issued national security letters for phone records to a communications provider — even though the FBI is the only agency with statutory authority to issue these NSLs;
• Various branches of the military illegally surveilled U.S. groups from Planned Parenthood to a white supremacist group called the National Alliance to an anti-war group called Alaskans for Peace and Justice;
• DHS improperly investigated the Nation of Islam and collected intelligence about a nonviolent Muslim conference in Georgia, including details about conference speakers who were Americans;
• The Army illegally investigated attendees at conference on Islamic law at the University of Texas Law School;
• The NSA admitted that, as of late 2007, it lacked processes and procedures for timely reporting of intelligence oversight violations;
• The FBI may have committed upward of 40,000 intelligence violations between late 2001 and 2010, including improperly issuing NSLs for images, education records, and hotel and financial records and monitoring young children’s calls for five days.  

A judge has since ordered the government to release previously withheld documents about agency misconduct or come up with new arguments to justify the secrecy. Because of the government’s requests for deadline extensions, the records are now due.