ACLU Tells FBI New Privacy Guidelines Not Good Enough

Yesterday, the American Civil Liberties Union, (ACLU), told the FBI that its privacy guidelines were not good enough in a meeting between the FBI, the ACLU and other privacy groups.

The meeting took place yesterday with, Robert Mueller, the FBI director, and was focused on discussing recent guidelines introduced by the FBI to control National Security Letters after previous reports of NSL power abuse.

In the last few months there have been concerns that the FBI is taking advantage of its powers regarding National Security Letters. In March a report was presented by the Department of Justice General stating that the FBI was abusing its NSL powers. In response to this report the FBI said that the report only used a small number of cases that could not be considered a fair representation.

However, the FBI soon had to change its stance when the results of its own internal audit came to light. The FBI's own audit revealed over one thousand abuses of its powers regarding national security investigations.

As a result privacy and civil rights groups have be meeting with the FBI to find out what the FBI is going to do about these abuses of power. However, the ACLU and other privacy groups feel that the new guidelines presented by the FBI to deal with the problems are not good enough.

Speaking about the situation, the Director of the ACLU, Caroline Fredrickson said, " Though we appreciate Director Mueller's continued outreach, these reforms are 'too little too late' and we remain sceptical that any internal FBI regulation of NSL use will correct the problem."

According to Fredrickson the FBI have been allowing these abuse to go one unchecked for three years. As a result the law has been violated on thousands of occasions. It is unclear whether the FBI was aware of these violations occurring until they were notified of if they were aware but choose to ignore them. However regardless of what really went on Fredrickson believes "it's clear that the bureau requires outside oversight and a legislative solution is required."

Fredrickson also talked about how powers that went uncheck will always lead to some kind of abuse occurring. The results of both the external and internal investigations into the NSL abuses prove that there need to be an outside source checking on the FBI and setting guidelines. This is because it would be unrealistic to expect the FBI to follow its own guidelines correctly based on what the reports uncovered.

ACLU Release about FBI guidelines not being good enough
http://www.aclu.com/safefree/nationalsecurityletters/30416prs20070709.html