Rampant Civil Liberties Abuse

A civil liberties group filed a FOIA request on the FBI to see what exactly they've been doing with all that digital information they've been collecting since 9/11 via that wonderful Patriot Act that is keeping us all so safe.

In a review of 2,500 documents, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has uncovered at least 800 confirmed violations of the law and the Constitution by the FBI in the years between 2001-2008.  In other words, that means the FBI is illegal obtaining information about American citizens without a warrant, a direct violation of our 4th Amendment rights.

The group explicitly notes that even though these violations occurred during the Bush administration, there is no reason to believe any of it has stopped since Obama became president.

From 2001 to 2008, the FBI frequently and flagrantly violated laws intended to check abusive intelligence investigations of American citizens. While many hoped the era of abusive FBI practices would end with the Bush Administration, there is little evidence that President Obama has taken significant measures to change past intelligence abuses. Two years into his term, the President has not publicly disclosed any appointments to the IOB, and his campaign promise of unprecedented transparency within the executive branch has gone largely unfulfilled — especially within the intelligence community.

When people ask where is the change, this is what they are talking about.