Report: FBI broke law in terrorist probes

A report in the Washington Post on Tuesday raised serious questions about how well U.S. intelligence agencies are handling terrorist-related investigations. In the wake of investigating terrorist threats that started with the 9-11 terrorist attack, the FBI broke the law by illegally collecting U.S. phone records to investigate potential threats, the newspaper said.

The breach was uncovered by the newspaper, which obtained emails showing how counterterrorism officials at the FBI did not follow their own regulations to protect civil liberties. A report by the Justice Department's inspector general due out this month is expected to say that the FBI violated the law with its emergency requests for phone records.

FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni told the newspaper that the FBI technically violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act when agents invoked nonexistent emergencies to collect records.

"What this turned out to be was a self-inflicted wound," she said.

These disclosures also raise the question of how effectively the U.S. is dealing with terrorism-related issue, whether the Intel agencies need to be reined in to prevent misuse of power and whether other technology is being misused to collect information.

For more on the FBI and its terrorism investigations:
- see this Washington Post article

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