Yet Another Example of Why The Patriot Act Is Bad

It will be a very appreciated day in America when it is repealed.

From the AP-

The FBI improperly and, in some cases, illegally used the USA Patriot Act to secretly obtain personal information about people in the United States, a Justice Department audit concluded Friday.

And for three years the FBI has underreported to Congress how often it forced businesses to turn over the customer data, the audit found.

FBI agents sometimes demanded the data without proper authorization, according to the 126-page audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. At other times, the audit found, the FBI improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances....

...At issue are the security letters, a power outlined in the Patriot Act that the Bush administration pushed through Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The letters, or administrative subpoenas, are used in suspected terrorism and espionage cases. They allow the FBI to require telephone companies, Internet service providers, banks, credit bureaus and other businesses to produce highly personal records about their customers or subscribers — without a judge's approval...

...Fine's annual review is required by Congress, over the objections of the Bush administration.

The audit released Friday found that the number of national security letters issued by the FBI skyrocketed in the years after the Patriot Act became law...

Bold added by me.

Glenn Greenwald explains how the President's signing statement on last year's Patriot Act renewal makes it not surprising that he has refused to comply with the provision requiring him to report to Congress on the use of these letters. As he sums up, "the law which the FBI has now been found to be violating is the very law which George Bush publicly declared he has the power to ignore." The Bush presidency in a nutshell.

The only truly shocking thing by now is that Congress keeps acting surprised by this.

And hey, speaking of the Justice Department and Patriot Act abuses...

Calls for Attorney General Gonzales to resign heat up, as the scandal surrounding the forced resignation of numerous U.S. Attorneys during the 2006 political season expands in scope.

On one note, the Justice Department has backed down and will allow Congress to reverse the policy that made all of this possible. But new revelations keep coming out, revealing the extent to which the White House, the Attorney General, and key congressional allies used the Justice Department as a partisan weapon.

Neither of these stories is over yet.