This morning’s Washington Post has a report that updates the ongoing revelations of how the federal government and its allied corporations are invading your privacy.

An internal audit by the Federal Bureau of Investigation found over 1,000 instances in which the feds illegally obtained information about citizens’ phone calls, e-mails and financial transactions since 2002.  The audit covered only 10 percent of the bureau’s investigations, so it’s safe to assume something like 10,000 illegal incursions in the past five years, which works out to an average of six per day.

Worse, the Post reports that of the thousand violations found by the audit, only two dozen were the result of the FBI making illegal requests of the corporations holding the data.  The other 976 violations of citizens’ privacy occurred because the corporations gave the FBI data it didn’t ask for.

Feel free to reread the above paragraph several times if you feel you must.  I had to read the Post story several times to make sure I got it right.  Here’s the way it’s supposed to work: before a corporation turns over private information to law enforcement agents, those agents must produce a “national security letter” or NSL, explaining why the government’s national security interests override a citizen’s right to privacy.  After September 11, 2001, Congress relaxed the rules governing national security letters.  For example, in the interest of expediency, the FBI may draft NSLs and use them to obtain information from corporations before a judge has an opportunity to review the NSL and determine that FBI agents truly have cause to violate a citizen’s rights.

The internal audit of ten percent of the past five years’ investigations turned up 24 cases in which the NSLs drafted by the FBI did not meet the legal threshold for obtaining private information.  That’s bad enough, but what’s truly shocking is, in 976 instances, corporations turned over private information without it being requested.

How does that happen?  Incompetence on the part of the corporations?  That’s plausible, given that every month or so we learn of some company or government agency posting thousands of social security numbers on the web or losing a laptop with scads of sensitive information.  Those of a more cynical turn of mind might think G-men know they’re not entitled to the information they seek, so they don’t bother with NSLs.  The company colludes with this and everyone agrees that if the scam is exposed, they can just say, “Oops! My mistake!”  Why not?  That’s what Alberto Gonzales does.

Lest you think that sounds too much like a conspiracy theory, the Post also reported that when the FBI got all this illegal information it didn’t ask for, the agents DID NOT call the offending companies the say, “Stop sending us private information we didn’t ask for,” they just put the illegal information in their files. Sometimes they retroactively issued NSLs so they could justify keeping the ill-gotten goods. Now that this has been exposed, the FBI says it will “identify mistakenly produced information and isolate it from investigative files.”  Why not just destroy it?  I suppose if someone sent them a pound of cocaine they would have just have one hell of an office party.

Although it’s unforgivable, it’s clear why the FBI breaks the law.  Since it’s inception, the bureau has always thought of itself as an entity above the law, but what incentive is there for the corporations?  The three types of corporations we’re talking about here are phone companies, Internet service providers and banks or other credit-tracking institutions.  All of them are to some extent regulated by the federal government and all want favors from the Bush administration.  If your lobbyist shows up at the White House with the eternal gratitude of the FBI for helping strip away Americans’ civil liberties, so much the better.

As it happens, today’s Post also reports that Republican activist and $16 million-per-year corporate lobbyist Ed Gillespie has just been named as advisor to George W. Bush.  As an advisor, Mr. Gillespie is not subject to Senate confirmation and Congress has little oversight of his activities. The post notes that prominent among the 57 companies hiring Mr. Gillespie are financial services and telecommunications corporations.  The Post says Mr. Gillespie’s firm, Quinn Gillespie & Associates, “had come to be regarded as the one to see if a company wanted access to the White House.”

Need I say more?

© Mark Floegel, 2007