‘FBI broke own rules seeking information in terror cases’

By DPA

Washington : The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) broke the law or its own rules more than 1,000 times while searching for information relevant to terrorism cases in domestic phone calls, e-mails and financial records, the Washington Post reported Thursday.


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The information from an internal FBI audit provided to the Post shows significantly more mistakes by the agency than previously reported in the controversial National Security Letter, or NSL, programme.

Critics say the programme violates civil liberties by granting federal law enforcement authorities too broad a hand in searching for crimes.

Most of the violations were the result of outside mistakes, such as telephone companies providing too much information to an FBI request, but in about two dozen instances agents requested information they were not allowed to access.

Officials said there was no evidence anyone knowingly violated the law and they are making changes to prevent the problems from recurring.

After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Congress substantially eased the rules for issuing NSLs, resulting in an explosive growth in their use, with more than 19,000 issued in 2005 seeking 47,000 pieces of information, mostly from telecommunications companies, reported the Post.

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