FBI Wiretaps Dropped Due to Unpaid Bills
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WASHINGTON -- Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau's repeated failures to pay phone bills on time.
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The FBI has squandered $170 million  on a failed computer system agents can use to instantly share  information, and seems to know neither how long it will take  nor how much it will cost to build one, a Justice Department  audit showed on Thursday.
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The feds accidentally give a D.C. attorney a classified document showing that the NSA intercepted his phone calls without a warrant. When they ask for it back, they get a $2 million lawsuit along with it. By Ryan Singel.
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The FBI lost at least 10 laptop computers containing classified information during a four-year period ending in 2005, the Justice Department's inspector general has found.
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The FBI has failed to translate hundreds of thousands of hours of wiretap recordings from counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, despite steep increases in funding for new linguists and other translation services, according to a report released yesterday.
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(InfoWorld) - When the U.S. Congress adjourned in the early morning hours Saturday, it left a number of technology-related bills unfinished, including two bills addressingÂ fraudulent access to personal telephone records. Despite pressure from members of the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, the full House failed to act on the Prevention of Fraudulent Access to Phone Records Act. The law would have allowed the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to seek civil penalties against businesses that obtain personal data under false pretenses. The committee has been looking into privacy concerns related to so-called pretexting since early this year, but the issue came to a head last month, whenÂ Hewlett-Packard revealedÂ it had used questionable investigative techniques in the surveillance of board members, employees, and reporters. With pretexting, private investigators or identity thieves pretend to be customers of mobile phone carriers or other companies in order to gain access to personal records such as call logs. Congress still has more time to act on the pretexting legislation or six related bills this year, however. After a month-plus break allowing lawmakers to focus on the Nov. 7 election, Congress will return for a lame-duck session Nov. 9. Democrats last week complained that the House Republican leadership had held up the pretexting legislation, but Representative Joe Barton, a Texas Republican and Energy and Commerce chairman, said he'd continue to push for the legislation. Congress alsoÂ failed to pass a wide-ranging broadband billÂ that would replace local franchise rules with a national system for telecom providers launching Internet Protocol-based television services in competition with cable TV. And although U.S. President George Bush called on Congress to pass legislation authorizing a controversial National Security Agency (NSA)Â surveillance program, two bills making it easier for the government to conduct surveillance without court-ordered warrants also stalled. One piece of Internet-related legislation did pass early Saturday. The Senate passed a bill providing money for seaport security, and added to the bill was a provision prohibiting U.S. banks and credit-card companies from processing payments to online gambling sites. A group of professional poker players had asked Congress to reject the bill, but a group of House Republicans pushed for the legislation, saying offshore gambling sites were breaking U.S. gambling-control laws. Bush had called for legislation to authorize the NSA program, which has listened in on the electronic communications of U.S. residents without court-ordered warrants, as a way to head off multiple lawsuits targeting the program. He has argued the program is necessary to help keep U.S. residents safe from terrorism. The HouseÂ passed one surveillance bill, but the Senate failed to act. The House bill would allow federal law enforcement officials to spy on U.S. residents for up to 90 days without a court order in the period after a terrorist attack. The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), a civil liberties and privacy advocacy group, said it was happy to see the surveillance and broadband bills stall. Republicans supporting the surveillance bill were pushing it as a way to show they were focused on national security during the last weeks of the congressional campaign, said Nancy Libin, a staff counsel at CDT. "Now that they've gone home, I'm not sure what kind of priority it will be when they come back," she said. Several civil liberties groups had opposed the broadband bill as it lacked protections for so-called net neutrality. Net neutrality advocates want a law that would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or slowing service to Web sites offering competing content, and they have successfully halted the Senate version of the broadband bill, despiteÂ heavy lobbying from large broadband providers.
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The FBI, which has had trouble keeping track of its guns and laptops, also has a chronic problem paying its phone bills on time, according to audit results released yesterday.
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Problems 'serious and must be addressed immediately' The FBI repeatedly broke the law by secretly accessing information about US citizens under a law passed to curb terrorism, according to the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General in a report that prompted a sharp rebuke from legislators and civil libertarians.â¦
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The FBI said on Thursday it may have to scrap a new &#36;170 million computer program designed to allow agents to share information instantly and fix a main problem identified after the Sept. 11 attacks.
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WASHINGTON - The FBI has a backlog of hundreds of thousands of hours of untranslated audio recordings from terror and espionage investigations, despite large increases in money and personnel for translations since the 2001 terror attacks, a Justice Department audit released Monday said.    In addition, the audit by Glenn A...
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The shadow of an FBI investigation  spread across the subprime mortgage crisis on Tuesday, while  the U.S. Congress moved closer to emergency relief for millions  of distressed homeowners.
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Noise on the wire Opponents of the Bush administration's controversial warrantless wiretapping program have suffered a pair of defeats in their efforts to rein in the scheme.â¦
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The FBI has a backlog of hundreds of thousands of hours of untranslated audio recordings from terrorism and espionage investigations, despite large increases in money and personnel for translations since the 2001 terror attacks, a Justice Department audit released Monday said.
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NEW YORK At first glance, it might seem like the simple extension of a standard tool in the fight against the bad guys. But in fact, wiretapping Internet phones to monitor criminals and terrorists is costly
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A seamy practice with a slightly annoying name is separating unwary consumers from their banking information, according to a bulletin released by the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center.
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The FBI abused its power by illegally or improperly obtaining telephone, financial and other secret records in investigations of terrorism or espionage suspects, the U.S. Justice Department's inspector general said on Friday.
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A Justice Department investigation has found pervasive errors in the FBI's use of its power to secretly demand telephone, e-mail and financial records in national security cases, officials with access to the report said yesterday.