FBI going to court more often to get personal Internet-usage data

Πηγή: Washington Post
By Ellen Nakashima

Oct 26 2011

Investigators once routinely used administrative subpoenas, called national security letters, seeking information about who sent and received e-mail and what Web sites individuals visited. The letters can be issued by FBI field offices on their own authority, and they obligate the recipients to keep the requests secret.

But more recently, many service providers receiving national security letters have limited the information they give to customers’ names, addresses, length of service and phone billing records.

“Beginning in late 2009, certain electronic communications service providers no longer honored” more expansive requests, FBI officials wrote in August, in response to questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee.

This marked a shift from comments made last year by Obama administration officials, who asserted then that most service providers were disclosing sufficient information when presented with national security letters.

Investigators seeking more expansive information over the past two years have turned to court orders called business record requests. In the first three months of this year, more than 80 percent of all business record requests were for Internet records that would previously have been obtained through national security letters, the FBI said. The FBI made more than four times as many business records requests in 2010 than in 2009: 96 compared with 21, according to Justice Department reports.

In response to concerns expressed by administration officials, Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) has introduced a measure that would establish that the FBI can use national security letters to obtain “dialing, routing, addressing and signaling information.” It would not include the content of an e-mail or other communications, the administration has said.

The administration, which last year contemplated legislation to expand the authority of national security letters, has not taken a formal position on the Leahy measure, officials said. But the FBI has told Congress that the number of business record orders will continue to grow unless a legal change gives the agency more routine access to customer data.

Civil liberties groups said Leahy’s measure, included in a bill to modernize the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, would expand the government’s authority to obtain substantial data about the private communications of individuals without court oversight.

“Our view is data like e-mail ‘to-from’ information is so sensitive that it ought to be available only with a court order,” said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Privacy advocates said they support requiring the FBI to use court orders to seek the data. “This is an example of how the system should work,” said American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel Michelle Richardson.

Business record requests are also known as Section 215 orders, after a provision in the Patriot Act, the law passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The provision allows the government to obtain “any tangible thing” if officials can show reasonable grounds that it would be relevant to an authorized terrorism or espionage investigation.

The ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation on Wednesday plan to separately sue the government to force disclosure of its interpretation of Section 215. The groups are following the lead of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who has accused the administration of inappropriately withholding information about the law’s use.

On Oct. 19, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote to Wyden, saying the government has briefed Congress on the classified uses of Section 215. “We do not believe the Executive Branch is operating pursuant to ‘secret law,’ ” Weich wrote.

Friends of U.S., Terrorists in Eyes of Law

Πηγή: New York Times
By Dan Frosch
Sep. 18 2011

Nassir Al-Rifahe never thought his love for America would be questioned.

As a member of the Iraqi National Congress, he worked for years to topple Saddam Hussein before being granted political asylum in the United States in 1997.

But for the last decade, while Mr. Rifahe, 57, lived quietly with his family in Texas and Minnesota, the Department of Homeland Security has refused to grant his application for a green card, instead letting the case languish unresolved.

Under a sweeping section of federal immigration law, the government considers Mr. Rifahe to have engaged in terrorist-related activity, making him ineligible to live here permanently. That the group Mr. Rifahe worked for was once supported by the United States and tried to overthrow Saddam Hussein matters little.

“It is not fair; I want to stay here,” Mr. Rifahe said. “How come they helped me before, but now they say I am a terrorist? I can’t believe this. Never would I do this.”

An estimated 4,000 cases similar to Mr. Rifahe’s are on hold around the country. Some have dragged on for years as immigration officials wrestle with how to handle people previously granted political asylum or refugee status in this country, but whose past affiliations technically bar them from permanent residency.

Many of the cases involve people who belonged to groups in their homelands once backed by Washington, immigration lawyers and human rights advocates say. Often, it is their connection to those groups that allowed the immigrants to come here in the first place.

The situation has created a conundrum for United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, which acknowledges that the individuals pose no threat to national security. But the agency says existing law would force their green card applications to be denied and has instead placed the cases on hold until special exemptions can be created.

“The law is being applied as a blunt instrument to label people terrorists who didn’t engage in any terrorist activity and who were actually victims,” said Anwen Hughes, senior counsel for Human Rights First, a New York-based group that is pushing to change the portion of immigration law in question. “The information about their pasts is information they volunteered, and in some cases, it is the information upon which the U.S. granted them refugee protection initially.”

At issue is a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which was bolstered after the Sept. 11 attacks by the Patriot Act and other legislation to prevent terrorists from entering the United States.

As currently worded, the act defines a terrorist group as any organization with two or more people that has engaged in a range of violent activities against persons or property. This would include groups that take up arms against a government.

Simply belonging to such an organization, which does not have to be officially designated by the United States as terrorist, or providing “material support” are grounds for being barred from this country.

The law makes no distinction for groups or governments that Washington views favorably.

As a result, an assortment of refugees and asylum-seekers are deemed terrorists or to have aided terrorist groups. For example, immigrants once affiliated with organizations that battled the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan or took up arms against the Sudanese government, both efforts the United States was sympathetic to at one point, have been unable to receive green cards, Ms. Hughes said.

Many of the cases do not even involve violence by the green card applicants, but rather lending assistance to political or military factions, she added.

Without a green card, immigrants cannot become citizens, must apply to travel outside the country in some cases and can have a more difficult time with employment.

“My kids keep asking me why I am not a citizen like they are,” said Shefqet Krasniqi, a project manager for a New York City construction company. “I am living ashamed. It doesn’t make sense to think I would harm a country I owe so many things to.” He left a war-ravaged Kosovo in 1999 and was granted political asylum in the United States.

Mr. Krasniqi said he was informed that his green card application has been on hold because of his association with the Kosovo Liberation Army, which he joined after Serbian forces attacked villages near his home.

The Homeland Security, Justice and State Departments are working to create special waivers so the green card applications can be transferred to immigration courts, where most requests for permanent residency are likely to be granted.

According to the citizenship and immigration agency, 3,500 cases were cleared for consideration last year, and the agency has vowed that the rest will be cleared by the end of this year.

“Based on available information and following a case-by-case review, U.S.C.I.S. has determined that all remaining cases currently being held on terrorism-related inadmissibility grounds do not, in fact, pose any threat to the United States,” Christopher Bentley, a spokesman for Citizenship and Immigration Services, said in a statement.

Francisco Saborit, who served time in a Cuban prison for breaking a sugar cane cutting machine in protest of Fidel Castro’s communist government, has been waiting more than five years to receive his green card.

Mr. Saborit left Cuba in 2005 after being persecuted for his involvement with pro-democracy groups, he said. He was granted refugee status and has been living in Miami.

But a 2008 letter from the government initially denied Mr. Saborit’s request, citing subversion against the Castro regime. His case has been reopened, but there has been no action.

Mr. Saborit said he is too ashamed to tell his friends why he still does not have a green card after all these years.

“I am paralyzed in this country,” Mr. Saborit said through an interpreter. “I feel like I’m a prisoner. I am really tired of everything.”