Newly Released Documents Detail FBI’s Plan to Expand Federal Surveillance Laws

EFF just received documents in response to a 2-year old FOIA request for information on the FBI’s “Going Dark” program, an initiative to  increase the FBI’s authority in response to problems the FBI says it’s  having implementing wiretap and pen register/trap and trace orders on new communications technologies. The documents detail a fully-formed and  well-coordinated [...]

FBI involved in hundreds of violations in national security investigations

The FBI disclosed to a presidential board that it was involved in nearly 800 violations of laws, regulations or policies governing national security investigations from 2001 to 2008, but the government won’t provide details or say whether anyone was disciplined, according to a report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which sued the FBI under the [...]

National Security Letters in Foreign Intelligence Investigations: A Glimpse of the Legal Background and Recent Amendments,

New CRS report on the issue. Read it here.

FBI director defends sting operations

(AP) FBI Director Robert Mueller on Wednesday defended his agency’s use of sting operations in snaring terrorism suspects, a technique some have complained amounts to entrapment. The FBI has come under criticism over its repeated use of stings in which agents and informants walk a suspect through a carefully choreographed plot to carry out what [...]

FBI whistleblower trial highlights bureau’s post-9/11 transformation

The Washington Post reports that an FBI whistleblower trial has cast a spotlight on the bureau’s difficult transition from a crime-fighting agency into a counterterrorism and intelligence force, as seen through the career of its highest-ranking Arab American agent. Over a two-week trial in Washington, a federal jury heard for the first time how Bassem [...]

F.B.I. Searches Antiwar Activists’ Homes

F.B.I.  agents executed search warrants Friday in Minneapolis and Chicago in connection to an investigation of material support of terror organizations, the New York Times reports. The searches in Minneapolis took place early in the morning at the homes of people who have helped organize demonstrations against the war in Iraq and protests held two [...]

DOJ Inspector General Report – Review of the FBI’s investigations of certain domestic advocacy groups

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released a report Monday absolving the FBI of charges that agents conducted investigations of domestic groups based on their exercise of First Amendment rights. The report criticizes the FBI for beginning investigations on weak factual predicates, continuing investigations longer than necessary, inappropriately retaining [...]

Evidence suppression denied in al-Qurashi v. Obama

Georgetown SLB reports that judge Huvelle denied a motion to suppress certain evidence in connection with Sabry Mohammad Ebrahim al-Qurashi’s habeas petition.The motion presented a factual dispute as to whether al-Qurashi was abused while in Pakistani custody after being arrested in Karachi in February 2002, prior to his interrogation by an FBI agent the next [...]

White House proposal would ease FBI access to records of Internet activity

The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual’s Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation, the Washington Post reports. The administration wants to add just four words — “electronic communication [...]

Terror suspect wanted in US released in Kosovo

On Friday 18 June, a EU judge ordered the release of an ethnic Albanian man arrested just one day earlier at the request of the Unites States government. Federal prosecutors in North Carolina charged Barjam Asllani, a 29-year-old from the divided town of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo, with “providing material support to terrorists and conspiring [...]