Companies ‘all too willing’ to comply with FBI requests for personal information, EFF says

As the US prepares once again to extend the Patriot Act, a new report from a privacy watchdog indicates that the FBI’s use of the law and other surveillance powers may have led to as many as 40,000 violations of the law by the bureau in the years since 9/11.

According to documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, from 2001 to 2008 the FBI reported nearly 800 violations of surveillance law and the Constitution to the Intelligence Oversight Board, a civilian monitoring group that reports to the president.

The EFF also determined that the FBI investigated some 7,000 potential violations of the law that occurred during surveillance operations. The group estimated that, based on the rate of reporting of violations, the FBI may have violated the law as many as 40,000 times during investigations since 9/11.

‘The documents suggest the FBI’s intelligence investigations have compromised the civil liberties of American citizens far more frequently, and to a greater extent, than was previously assumed,’ the EFF stated in its report.

Of the nearly 800 confirmed violations, about one-third involved National Security Letters, which give the FBI the ability to request private […]