FBI says: Shut your mouth
We read:
"A federal appeals court may have slapped the Federal Bureau of Investigation last year for its misuse of gag orders to prevent discussion of government investigations conducted under the authority of National Security Letters, but that hasn't slowed the feds very much. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, despite a court's finding that such gag orders are constitutionally suspect and should be subject to judicial review, the FBI continues to muzzle recipients of the controversial letters, preventing them from participating in public debate over the Patriot Act and the security state.
National Security Letters are powerful tools that allow federal agents to obtain information about investigation targets from third parties, such as telephone companies, financial institutions, Internet service providers, and consumer credit agencies on their own say-so, without judicial review. Some 47,000 such letters were issued in 2005 alone, according to the Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General (PDF). The letters don't receive much public discussion, probably because many of the recipients are also issued gag orders, forbidding them to discuss the experience.
Those gag orders were found to be constitutionally suspect exercises of "prior restraint" in a decision issued last year by the Second District U.S. Court of Appeals.
But, says the ACLU, the FBI is "continuing to unconstitutionally enforce its five-year-old gag order on a John Doe NSL recipient and his ACLU attorneys."
Worse, the ACLU maintains that the gag order on its John Doe client is being used to suppress the revelation that an NSL was used in a search for records it was not legally entitled to obtain.
Source
Secrecy is often used to cover up government abuses of power and, given the many low-lifes Obama has appointed, that is a real concern. And it seems here that the FBI is behaving illegally by breaching a court order. This is an attack on the law by those who are supposed to be enforcing it. When governments start ignoring court orders, the rule of law is dead.
2 comments:
I'm far more concerned with liberal judges who write their own laws than i am with federal agencies that "allegedly" break existing laws. If those gag orders were found to be "constitutionally suspect", that's not the same as being "unconstitutional" as the aclu would have us believe. To the aclu, anthing they dislike or disagree with (they) deem "unconstitutional".
Personally, i say strip the FBI and all other intelligence agencies of all their powers. Then, when the bombs start going off around the country, simply call the aclu. I've always said it would take not one, but many 9/11's to make the American people come to their senses. As a NY'er who lives about 6 miles from where those towers used to stand, i only hope the next time it's in your city.
With the Obama administration inheriting the police state powers granted under the PATRIOT act, that is a perfect illustration why creating police state powers in the first place is a bad idea - you never know who might take them over. If the Congress decided that Bush could be trusted with the powers, they should have had them all sunset with his term on January 20, 2009, and make the new Congress explicitly re-authorize the powers, or whatever powers they believed Obama would be able to exercise responsibly, if any. And the passage of police state powers has not done anything to destroy the predatory enemy. Only resolve to declare war on, and destroy Islam will eradicate the enemy and restore a genuine peace.
Post a Comment