THREAT LEVEL
Just a day before the nation celebrated the life of the once-federally-spied-upon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the
New York Times
reported that both the Pentagon and the CIA have been issuing subpoenas
to domestic financial institutions to investigate possible terrorism.
Although the military and the CIA are largely barred from spying on
Americans, the Pentagon has stepped up its surveillance of American
citizens after September 11 as part of what it calls “force protection” —
that is, the protection of military installations on American soil.
Now, Eric Lichtblau and Mark Mazzetti
reveal
that both agencies have been using “National Security Letters” — which
are self-issued subpoenas for documents. These subpoenas are widely used
by the FBI since they do not require a judge’s approval. In 2005, the
first year the Justice Department was required to report how often they
used this power, the DOJ said it
issued 9,254
such letters to get information on 3,501 U.S. citizens and green card holders.
Unlike the FBI’s version, the military and CIAs’ are voluntary.
Pentagon spokesman Maj. Patrick Ryder said the letters “provide
tremendous leads to follow and often with which to corroborate other
evidence in the context of counterespionage and counterterrorism,”
according to the
New York Times. Vice President Dick Cheney defended the use of the power in an interview Sunday, saying the letters
don’t violate civil rights since banks could contest them in court.
The Pentagon said it intended to keep the records it gained from the
letters and feed the information into a database run by the
Counterintelligence Field Office. That office houses a database called
TALON that
included records on peaceful anti-war protesters. The Pentagon also, in the name of base protection,
funded
a data-mining study examined ways to study travel database records and
commercial data to identify potential travelers. That study used
commercial data provided by Acxiom paired with the entirety of JetBlue’s
travel database, which the company
secretly handed over in September 2002 to the government in violation of its privacy promises.
While the Pentagon has reportedly issued only a relatively small
number of such letters — approximately 500 or so –, civil libertarians
say the military has no place investigating American citizens on
American soil. House Intelligence chair Silvestre Reyes said he plans
to hold hearings, and I expect the topic to get attention even in
Thursday’s Senate Judiciary committee’s
planned grilling of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Photo:
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