It is no secret that the government has taken advantage of the 9/11 tragedy and scared the majority of the country into willingly sacrificing their freedom for a false sense of security. Yet, even with the sheeple cowed into compliance, the few remaining “annoyances” required to get unfettered access to the personal information of every US citizen are still apparently too daunting for the fine agents of the FBI. According to information contained in a report released today by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General, the FBI routinely ignores the already lenient rules that they are required to follow to obtain phone records.

According to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, telecom providers are allowed to immediately provide records in the case of an actual emergency where there is a “reasonable belief” that “an emergency involving danger of death or serious physical injury to any person requires disclosure without delay.” The FBI expresses this urgent need through what is called an “exigent letter” that is provided to the phone company. While I am not privy to the actual process, I can only imagine that it involves an agent filling in the phone number in question on a form letter and then handing it to a phone company employee (who, believe it or not, works inside the FBI office responsible for handling these requests). While you would imagine that the FBI would be perfectly happy with a system that is devoid of judicial oversight and only requires only writing a letter to gain access to private records, but according to the Inspector General’s report agents routinely obtained records without using an “exigent letter”. In some cases, the phone number in question was merely written down on a Post-It note left on the telecom employee’s desk, other times requests were made verbally.

Additionally, the FBI has developed a new legal “theory” that allows telecoms to divulge information without any judicial process AT ALL! Unfortunately for the American public, the portion of the report dealing with this new theory is heavily redacted. Hidden from view is any discussion of the legal basis for this new claim. Even the section number of the law the FBI feels grants it this power is redacted. This ridiculous secrecy is exactly the opposite of what you would expect from an administration that ran on a platform of hope and promised openness and transparency. Well at least we know that it is business as usual at the Department of Injustice.

FBI Replaced Legal Process with Post-It Notes to Obtain Phone Records

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