United Liberty

It should come as no surprise that the FBI illegally collected phone records, breaking their own rules to protect civil liberties in the process:

The FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply persuading phone companies to provide records, according to internal bureau memos and interviews. FBI officials issued approvals after the fact to justify their actions

E-mails obtained by The Washington Post detail how counterterrorism officials inside FBI headquarters did not follow their own procedures that were put in place to protect civil liberties. The stream of urgent requests for phone records also overwhelmed the FBI communications analysis unit with work that ultimately was not connected to imminent threats.

When government agencies are given the ability to take actions that may have an impact on civil liberties, they tend to overstep their boundaries. The abuse of the USA PATRIOT Act immediately comes to mind. According to a Washington Post report in June 2007, there were over 1,000 instances of abuse where the FBI collected information through domestic phone calls, e-mails and financial transactions using the PATRIOT Act. The bad news is that this was only a 10 percent sample, meaning there was more abuse to be found.