More Privacy Violations Admitted by FBI

kwietman writes: The FBI admitted that, for the fourth straight year, they improperly accessed phone and internet records of U.S. citizens(http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gxSQM-Pj5GvDDx_r9HNZvtF6JAGgD8V7HN7O0) Director Robert Meuller testified that the abuses occurred prior to sweeping reforms enacted in 2007, and actually blamed the breaches in part on the telecommunications companies who, he says, submitted more information than requested. In another unsurprising development, the FBI also underreported the number of security letters, used to authorize wiretaps and to subpoena internet and telecom records, by over 4600 in 2006. The use of these letters to identify potential terrorists has, according to government audit, increased by several orders of magnitude since the enactment of the Patriot Act. Over 1000 of these security letters were found to be improper in 2005, and similar numbers were expected for 2006 and 2007.