Any way you look at this, it is just wrong. Especially since the banks voluntarily turn over the records, without as much as a peep, or without notifying their clients. One more step closer to the military coup. Who needs warrants anymore, right?
Military Expands Intelligence Role in U.S. The Pentagon has been using a little-known power to obtain banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage inside the U.S. .. Banks, credit card companies and other financial institutions receiving the letters usually have turned over documents voluntarily, allowing investigators to examine the financial assets and transactions of American military personnel and civilians, officials say. ... But it was not previously known, even to some senior counterterrorism officials, that the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency have been using their own “noncompulsory” versions of the letters. Congress has rejected several attempts by the two agencies since 2001 for authority to issue mandatory letters, in part because of concerns about the dangers of expanding their role in domestic spying.The military and the C.I.A. have long been restricted in their domestic intelligence operations, and both are barred from conducting traditional domestic law enforcement work. The C.I.A.’s role within the United States has been largely limited to recruiting people to spy on foreign countries.
...
“There’s a strong tradition of not using our military for domestic law enforcement,” said Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, a former general counsel at both the National Security Agency and the C.I.A. who is the dean at the McGeorge School of Law at the University of the Pacific. “They’re moving into territory where historically they have not been authorized or presumed to be operating.”Similarly, John Radsan, an assistant general counsel at the C.I.A. from 2002 to 2004 and now a law professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, said, “The C.I.A. is not supposed to have any law enforcement powers, or internal security functions, so if they’ve been issuing their own national security letters, they better be able to explain how they don’t cross the line.”
The Pentagon’s expanded intelligence-gathering role, in particular, has created occasional conflicts with other federal agencies. Pentagon efforts to post American military officers at embassies overseas to gather intelligence for counterterrorism operations or future war plans has rankled some State Department and C.I.A. officials, who see the military teams as duplicating and potentially interfering with the intelligence agency.
Very disturbing.
Especially in light of:
The agency houses an antiterrorist database of intelligence tips and threat reports, known as TALON, which had been collecting information on antiwar planning meetings at churches, libraries and other locations. The Defense Department has since tightened its procedures for what kind of information is allowed into the Talon database, and the counterintelligence office also purged more than 250 incident reports from the database that officials determined should never have been included because they centered on lawful political protests by people opposed to the war in Iraq.
Tags: privacy, /surveillance
The military’s frequent use of national security letters has sometimes caused concerns from the businesses receiving them, a counterterrorism official said. Lawyers at financial institutions, which routinely provide records to the F.B.I. in law enforcement investigations, have contacted bureau officials to say they were confused by the scope of the military’s requests and whether they were obligated to turn the records over, the official said.Companies are not eager to turn over sensitive financial data about customers to the government, the official said, “so the more this is done, and the more poorly it’s done, the more pushback there is for the F.B.I.”
The bureau has frequently relied on the letters in recent years to gather telephone and Internet logs, financial information and other records in terrorism investigations, serving more than 9,000 letters in 2005, according to a Justice Department tally. As an investigative tool, the letters present relatively few hurdles; they can be authorized by supervisors rather than a court. Passage of the Patriot Act in October 2001 lowered the standard for issuing the letters, requiring only that the documents sought be “relevant” to an investigation and allowing records requests for more peripheral figures, not just targets of an inquiry.
Some Democrats have accused the F.B.I. of using the letters for fishing expeditions, and the American Civil Liberties Union won court challenges in two cases, one for library records in Connecticut and the other for Internet records in Manhattan. Concerned about possible abuses, Congress imposed new safeguards in extending the Patriot Act last year, in part by making clear that recipients of national security letters could contact a lawyer and seek court review. Congress also directed the Justice Department inspector general to study the F.B.I.’s use of the letters, a review that is continuing.
Unlike the F.B.I., the military and the C.I.A. do not have wide-ranging authority to seek records on Americans in intelligence investigations. But the expanded use of national security letters has allowed the Pentagon and the intelligence agency to collect records on their own. Sometimes, military or C.I.A. officials work with the F.B.I. to seek records, as occurred with an American translator who had worked for the military in Iraq and was suspected of having ties to insurgents.
Very disturbing.
