The Pentagon has misled Congress and the US public by conniving with the FBI to obtain hundreds of financial, telephone and Internet records without court approval, civil-rights campaigners said on Sunday.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has successfully challenged key planks of US anti-terrorism legislation, said it had uncovered 455 "National Security Letters" (NSLs) issued at the behest of the Department of Defense (DOD).
Before the ACLU's challenge, the USA Patriot Act had allowed the FBI to issue gag orders to prevent those receiving NSLs -- usually Internet service providers, banks and libraries -- from disclosing anything about the request.
Beyond the gag orders, the ACLU said its analysis of the letters showed the Pentagon and FBI had collaborated "to circumvent the law" and "provided misleading information to Congress" about the nature and reach of the requests.
"Once again, the Bush administration's unchecked authority has led to abuse and civil liberties violations," ACLU executive director Anthony Romero said.
"At the very least, it certainly looks like the FBI and DOD are conspiring to evade limits placed on the Department of Defense's surveillance powers," Romero said.
While the FBI enjoys broad powers of surveillance under the Patriot Act, the Pentagon's authority is more limited and it is normally expected to go through the FBI for such information.
The documents show that in many cases, the FBI has merely acted as a front for the Pentagon, enabling defense officials to gain access to records they are "not entitled to receive," the ACLU said.
The group said that it had obtained the records after suing the two government agencies under the Freedom of Information Act.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late