FBI admits to Protecting spying Telecoms from Lawsuits

[kpete]

The American Civil Liberties Union remained suspicious that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was doing things not provided for under the law (a law they hold is itself unconstitutional). So they sent in a Freedom of Information request and got back piles of paper with black lines through a lot of the text.

The piles of paper did reveal that the ACLU’s suspicions were correct, and that the law wasn’t being followed in many instances.

But it also revealed that some US telecom companies still seem to be spilling our information to the government on request, without a warrant. So the ACLU wrote in asking that the black lines be removed and the identity of the telecom companies involved be revealed.

Amazingly, the FBI answered the question straightforwardly. The official who wrote the reply thinks that the FBI works for the corporations, and not for the people or the Constitution.

http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/fbi-if-we-told-you-you-might-sue-1 ‘In this case, the FBI withheld the identities of the electronic communication service providers that have provided information, or are listed as potentially required to provide information, to the FBI as part of its national security and criminal investigations under authority granted by Section 702 of the FAA. Exemption (b)(4)-1, cited in conjunction with (b)(7)(D)-1, has been asserted because disclosure of the identities of electronic communication service providers would cause substantial harm to their competitive position. Specifically, these businesses would be substantially harmed if their customers knew that they were furnishing information to the FBI. The stigma of working with the FBI would cause customers to cancel the companies services and file civil actions to prevent further disclosure of subscriber information.’

more:
http://www.juancole.com/2011/05/fbi-admits-it-is-protecting-spying-telecoms-from-lawsuits.html