‘Unleashed and unaccountable’ – ACLU condemns FBI in new report

A report published on Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union urges the Obama administration to reform the Federal Bureau of Investigation following years of documented instances in which the FBI has abused its authority.

In thousands of words spanning a 60-plus page report titled
“Unleashed and Unaccountable: The FBI’s Unchecked Abuse of
Authority,“ the ACLU this week condemns the agency,
particularly in the years following the September 11, 2001
terrorist attacks.

The ACLU argues that since the attacks of 9/11, the federal
government has time and time again allowed the FBI to broaden its
law enforcement powers, often without sufficient oversight. As a
result, they write, the FBI has been transformed into
“a domestic intelligence and law enforcement
agency of unprecedented power and international
reach.”

Despite reform enacted in the wake of the infamous
years J. Edgar Hoover spent as FBI director, the ACLU says that
the agency has “subverted internal and external oversight”
in recent time, in turn allowing for gross abuse, often impacting
the civil liberties of Americans as a result.

In a plea for change, the ACLU accuses the FBI of
“squelching whistleblowers, imposing and
enforcing unnecessary secrecy and actively misleading Congress
and the American people” since 9/11, and
says the agency has “regularly overstepped
the law, infringing on Americans’ constitutional rights while
overzealously pursuing its domestic security
mission.”

Items highlighted by the ACLU in the report include
the secretive surveillance powers the agency has inherited
through the PATRIOT Act, its power to open investigations of
Americans without proof of a crime, racial and religious
profiling and the targeting of people exercising their First
Amendment-protected rights, such as journalists and political
activists.

Published on
the anniversary of the signing of the US Constitution, the ACLU
urges President Barack Obama and his administration “to conduct a
comprehensive examination of the FBI’s policies and practices to
identify and curtail any activities that are unnecessary,
ineffective or misused,” especially before the newly appointed
director of the agency, James Comey, can subvert any further the
policies enacted by his predecessor, James Mueller, who ran the
FBI from before 9/11 up until only this month.

Should the executive and legislative branches not
consider reform, the ACLU writes, “FBI officials and certain
members of Congress will undoubtedly demand that the new director
stay the course, no matter how disastrous it may be for American
civil liberties and privacy rights.”

“The list of abuses is long and demonstrates that
Congress must do a top-to-bottom review of FBI politics and
practices to identify and curtail any activities that are
unconstitutional or easily misused,” Hina Shamsi, director of
the ACLU’s National Security Project, said in a statement
accompanying the report. “The time for wholesale reform has
come.”

Copyright: RT