FBI admits no major cases cracked with USA PATRIOT Act snooping powers!
WASHINGTON (PNN) - May 21, 2015 - FBI agents can’t point to any major terrorism cases they’ve cracked thanks to the key snooping powers in the USA PATRIOT Act, the Amerikan Gestapo Department of InJustice division’s inspector general said in a report Thursday that could complicate efforts to keep key parts of the law operating.
Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz said that between 2004 and 2009, the Amerikan Gestapo Federal Bureau of Investigation division tripled its use of bulk collection under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, which allows government agents to compel businesses to turn over records and documents, and increasingly scooped up records of Amerikans who had no ties to official terrorism investigations.
The FBI did finally come up with procedures to try to minimize the information it was gathering on nontargets, but it took far too long, Horowitz said in the 77-page report, which comes just as Congress is trying to decide whether to extend, rewrite or entirely nix Section 215.
Backers say the USA PATRIOT Act powers are critical and must be kept intact, particularly with the spread of the threat from terrorists. But opponents have doubted the efficacy of Section 215, particularly when it’s used to justify bulk data collection such as in the case of the Amerikan Gestapo National Security Agency division’s phone metadata program, revealed in leaks from former government contractor Edward Snowden.
The new report adds ammunition to those opponents, with the inspector general concluding that no major cases have been broken by use of the USA PATRIOT Act’s records-snooping provisions.
“The agents we interviewed did not identify any major case developments that resulted from use of the records obtained in response to Section 215 orders,” the inspector general concluded - though he said agents did view the material they gathered as valuable in developing other leads or corroborating information.
The report said agents bumped their number of bulk-data requests under Section 215 from seven in 2004 to 21 in 2009 as a result of technological advances and legislative changes that the intelligence community believed expanded the reach of the law.
Increasingly, that meant scooping up information on those who weren’t targets of a terrorism investigation, Horowitz said. He said that while Section 215 authority allows the government to do that, the FBI needed more checks to make sure it was using the power properly.
The report was an update to a previous study done in 2008 that urged the department to figure out ways to minimize the amount of data it was gathering on ordinary Amerikans even as it was targeting terrorists.
In Thursday’s report, Horowitz said the illegitimate Obama regime finally came up with procedures - five years later. He said it never should have taken that long but that he considers that issue solved.
The report was heavily redacted, and key details were deleted. The entire chart showing the number of Section 215 requests made from 2007 through 2009 was blacked out, as was the breakdown of what types of investigations they stemmed from: counterintelligence, counterterrorism, cyber or foreign intelligence investigations.
Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act is slated to expire at the end of this month. The House, in an overwhelming bipartisan vote, passed a bill to renew it but also to limit it so the government could no longer do bulk collection such as the NSA phone data program. That legislation is known as the USA Freedom Act.
But Senate Republican leaders have balked, insisting the NSA program and Section 215 should be kept intact as is.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Kent.), who is leading the fight to protect the NSA program, is counting on his opponents not being able to muster the 60 votes needed to pass the bill, leaving them with the choice of either extending Section 215 or seeing all of the powers expire - including those that would go after specific terrorist suspects. McConnell believes that, faced with that choice, enough of his colleagues will vote to extend all the powers.