All Things Whistleblower: A GAP Blog

FBI Says It Doesn’t Need ‘Specific Reason’ To Investigate Anyone It Wants

The recent release of an FBI handbook on domestic intelligence-gathering has shown that the FBI has relaxed certain rules on privacy to, according to them, catch domestic terrorists. Privacy advocates are greatly concerned whether this new interpretation is threatening American civil liberties.

The FBI recently released its Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. It lays out increasingly lower standards for privacy, including a low threshold of evidence to start investigating a person or group as a potential security threat. It also gives greater permissions to FBI agents in investigations, including:

• permission to use ethnicity or religion as a factor when selecting subjects for scrutiny
• permission to send confidential informants to infiltrate organizations and followings
• permission to photograph targets in public

The F.B.I. had beforehand held similar powers in cases involving criminal activity. But until 9/11 and the Bush administration, greater justification was required to use the powers in national security investigations because they receive less judicial oversight.

Mike German, a former FBI veteran who blew the whistle on that agency’s wrongful and illegal actions, and who now works for the ACLU, stated:

“[The policy] raises fundamental questions about whether a domestic intelligence agency can protect civil liberties if they feel they have a right to collect broad personal information about people they don’t even suspect of wrongdoing.

To counter German’s logical concerns, in a very Big-Brother-esque statement that should raise eyebrows, the general council for the FBI stated:

“Those who say the F.B.I. should not collect information on a person or group unless there is a specific reason to suspect that the target is up to no good seriously miss the mark…The F.B.I. has been told that we need to determine who poses a threat to the national security — not simply to investigate persons who have come onto our radar screen.”

So…the FBI doesn’t need any reason to investigate anyone? Just whoever they want to, then? Just for kicks?

Civil Liberties Groups Urge Probe of Homeland Security Privacy Office

A coalition of 21 organizations and seven people sent a letter to lawmakers asking them to investigate the Department of Homeland Security office in charge of protecting Americans' privacy, saying it is enabling, rather than curbing, government surveillance and intelligence programs. The Privacy Coalition includes groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Privacy Information Center, and Bill of Rights Defense Committee.

The letter criticized the DHS Privacy Office, specifically mentioning that it had reviewed privacy effects of practices such as: suspicion-less searches of computers at border checkpoints, whole body imaging at airports, and closed-circuit television surveillance. But the office has done little to scale them back.

The letter from the Privacy Coalition comes after some groups have criticized the Obama administrations support for renewing the USA Patriot Act. Many civil liberties groups have argued the President has not made changes to privacy-threatening security measures put in place by George W. Bush.

GAP has long called for better protection of civil liberties. Click here to read an op/ed in the Los Angeles Times by GAP Homeland Security Director Jesselyn Radack.

IRS Amnesty Program for the Super-Rich Inflates Its Numbers

This post was written by GAP Homeland Security Director Jesselyn Radack for her Daily Kos Blog.

The Justice Department sued UBS, Switzerland's largest bank, seeking the names of 52,000 customers using Swiss bank accounts to evade taxes.  In its lame settlement of the case (it's a joke to call this plea a "bargain"), Switzerland agreed to turn over 4,500 names (fewer than 10% of those the U.S. sought.)

The IRS, which obviously misunderstands basic game theory, set up an Amnesty Program for the Super-Rich, through which offshore account-holders can come forward and avoid criminal liability.  This is an insult to those of us who obey the law and pay our taxes . . . but to up the yuck factor, the IRS is now inflating its numbers to make its flaccid program look "robust."  Sounds like the IRS office should be bombarded with Freedom of Information Act requests to IRS, Whistleblower Office, 1111 Constitution Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C.  20224.

The deadline for the IRS Voluntary Disclosure Program (a.k.a. the "Amnesty Program for the Super-Rich") was yesterday.  Under the program, which started in March, the IRS said that 3000 people came forward as of September 21.  The IRS extended the program until yesterday, and if we are to believe the IRS numbers, another 4000 tax dodgers came in.  

This is far-fetched.  I can believe that during the first 6 months, 3000 tax cheats come forward.  But I'm supposed t believe that during the past 3 weeks, 4000 come forward?  You can't chalk it up to a bunch of last-minute guilty consciences, or else you would have seen the same confessional influx right before the program originally expired in late September.

I wish I could take the IRS at its word, but the UBS scandal has been so fraught with government lies, that I can't believe anything it says these days.  The United States had UBS kingpin Martin Leichti in custody, let him plead the 5th, and return to Switzerland--a free man.  It also did a show indictment of Leichti's deputy, Raoul Weil, who is now galavanting around Switzerland and Lichtenstein.

Meanwhile, the whistleblower who made the whole case possible, Brad Birkenfeld, is the only one to be sentenced to jail. http://abcnews.go.com/...  In the government's own words,

Without Mr. Birkenfeld walking into the door of the Department of Justice, I doubt as of today that this massive fraud scheme would have been discovered by the U.S. Government.

 (Sentencing Transcript, p.12).

But the government has been all over the map on whether Birkenfeld is a whistleblower.  In 2007, when he initially came forward, the Justice Department told him,

[T]he Department of Justice does not, in any way, participate in the Whistleblower Reward Program.

But then, contradicting this, during a 2009 Senate hearing, Senator McCaskill asked IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman,

Was there a whistleblower in this case?

Shulman deferred the question to Justice Department senior tax attorney John DiCicco, who answered,

Brad Birkenfeld . . .

Then a few weeks ago, DiCicco told TIME magazine that Birkenfeld "is not entitled to whistleblower status," supposedly because he "did not give full an accurate disclosures during his proffer."  This is contradicted by the Justice Department’s own Motion for Sentence Reduction in which it said:

Birkenfeld provided substantial assistance . . . This substantial assistance has been timely, significant, useful, truthful complete, and reliable.

So, was the government lying then, or is it lying now?  The fact of the matter is that, to quote Dean Zerbe, author of the IRS Whistleblower law, the government couldn't spell "UBS" before it met Brad Birkenfeld.

And as for the Amnesty Program for the Super-Rich, the IRS needs to double-check its returns.

 

Climate Change Document Suppressed by Bush Administration Finally Released

A 2007 EPA document long suppressed by the Bush administration was finally released yesterday. And in less-than-shocking news, the document appealed for regulation of greenhouse gases, citing global warming as a significant threat to the United States. Oh, and it was purely based on scientific findings. The Bush administration did not release the document because it ran contrary to their political position on greenhouse emissions

Currently, the Obama administration has embraced the earlier, suppressed findings.  

This case has eerie similarities to that of Climate Science Watch Director Rick Piltz. From 1995 until resigning in March 2005 he served in senior positions in the office of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, a program that coordinates support for climate and global change research by 13 federal agencies. In March 2005, Piltz resigned over after discovering that the head of the White House counsel on Environmental Quality (a former lobbyist with the American Petroleum Institute), who had no scientific background, was editing documents on climate change to increase their level of scientific uncertainty, effectively lowering the perceived human impact on global warming. After a New York Times expose, the lobbyist resigned and days later took a job at Exxon Mobil.

Both of these cases demonstrate the absurd effect that politics can have on climate science policy, and hammer the point that politicians should keep their hands off of science.

Coal Plants Significantly Contaminate Drinking Water

While American coal-fired power plants have moved to reduce their air emissions, a New York Times investigative piece has discovered that many of them are creating another serious problem: water pollution.

Basically, due to community activism and new air pollution restrictions, many major plants are able to grab a significant percentage of their airborne waste product. The problem is that the waste needs somewhere to go. Much of it gets absorbed with water during a cleaning process, and as a result, tremendous amounts of “wastewater” are dumped in rivers that are the primary source of drinking water for numerous population areas (in the case of this particular article, Pittsburgh).

No federal regulations currently exist to limit the amount of power plant seepage into waterways or landfills. Even when the plants are regulated by the Clean Water Act, ninety percent of the more than 300 coal-fired power plants that have violated the Act since 2004 were not fined or punished in any way.

The article focuses on Hatfields Ferry, a power plant in Pennsylvania, which has violated the Clean Water Act 33 times since 2006. For those violations, the company paid less than $26,000. During that same period, the plants parent company earned $1.1 billion.

The EPA has attempted to create more stringent limits on power plant waste, mounting an effort in 2000. However, a campaign by coal and power industries successfully impeded the attempt.

Also affecting the effort to increase limits is the fact that in 2008 alone, power companies donated $20 million to federal political campaigns.

Power plants are the nation’s biggest producer of toxic waste and must be regulated. Wastewater from these plants often contains high concentrations of dissolved arsenic, barium, boron, iron, manganese, cadmium, magnesium and other heavy metals that have been shown to contribute to cancer, organ failures and other diseases.

Risk of E. Coli High, Oversight Low

This excellent NYT article demonstrates the failure of the beef industry and its governmental regulators to protect consumers from E. coli. Contamination is possible every step of the way, and the industry is not only not doing enough to prevent it, but is actively contributing to its spread by ignoring its own regulations and requiring retailers not to test beef before it is grinded and sold. The reason? Increased profit margin, of course.

Terribly, lobbying pressure from producers has caused the USDA to allow suppliers to run their own E. coli checks, despite suggestions that processors also test for the bacteria. An administrator with the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service said that the department could well compel the industry to test its meat, but they have to look at the entire industry, not just what is best for public health. The actual quote (from page 3 of the article, online):

In August 2008, the U.S.D.A. issued a draft guideline again urging, but not ordering, processors to test ingredients before grinding. “Optimally, every production lot should be sampled and tested before leaving the supplier and again before use at the receiver,” the draft guideline said.

But the department received critical comments on the guideline, which has not been made official. Industry officials said that the cost of testing could unfairly burden small processors and that slaughterhouses already test. In an October 2008 letter to the department, the American Association of Meat Processors said the proposed guideline departed from U.S.D.A.’s strategy of allowing companies to devise their own safety programs, “thus returning to more of the agency’s ‘command and control’ mind-set.”

Dr. Kenneth Petersen, an assistant administrator with the department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, said that the department could mandate testing, but that it needed to consider the impact on companies as well as consumers. “I have to look at the entire industry, not just what is best for public health,” Dr. Petersen said.

The article puts a face on one of the many victims of a lack of solid oversight. Stephanie Smith, formerly a children’s dance instructor, will never dance again. She’ll probably never walk again either, thanks to a virulent strain of E. coli that polluted a hamburger she consumed in 2007. The E. coli ravaged her system, leaving her in a coma for nine weeks, then paralyzed her from the waist down with kidneys that barely function.

Media-Shield Law in Trouble

In a somewhat unexpected and eye-raising move, the Obama administration has communicated its opposition to draft language of “media-shield” legislation to relevant Congressional committees. Specifically, the administration has stated that reporters should not be shielded from prison if they refuse to name sources that provide information “deemed to cause “significant” harm to national security.”

This action is problematic in numerous ways. Forget for a moment the fact that national security employees still find their work product mired in a complex, undeserving web of over-classification levels, as abused by the Bush administration (although the Obama administration is addressing this). The chief problem here is the lack of judicial review. From the article:

The bill includes safeguards that would require prosecutors to exhaust other methods for finding the source of the information before subpoenaing a reporter, and would balance investigators’ interests with “the public interest in gathering news and maintaining the free flow of information.”

But under the administration’s proposal, such procedures would not apply to leaks of a matter deemed to cause “significant” harm to national security. Moreover, judges would be instructed to be deferential to executive branch assertions about whether a leak caused or was likely to cause such harm, according to officials familiar with the proposal.

Therefore, whatever the Obama administration itself deems as being potentially harmful to national security, it can hold reporters to jail time for writing on (if they don’t give up their sources). In the interest of better transparency and justice, a third-party judicial review really should be instituted here. If only this would have been present during the Bush administration…