http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2006/01/06/fbi-did-not-abuse-patriot-act-in-brandon-mayfield-case/ Protect yourself from government gaffes, bureaucratic blunders and incumbent incompetence Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:25:45 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2006/01/06/fbi-did-not-abuse-patriot-act-in-brandon-mayfield-case/#comment-4122 Patriot Act: Don’t worry about abuse; worry about incompetence - Homeland Security or Homeland Stupidity Sat, 11 Mar 2006 08:23:57 +0000 http://www.ioerror.us/2006/01/06/fbi-did-not-abuse-patriot-act-in-brandon-mayfield-case/#comment-4122 [...] A report released Friday by the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General reviewed the use of the USA Patriot Act in the case of Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield, who was wrongfully accused of involvement in the 2004 Madrid train bombings. It found that incompetence, not abuse per se, led to Mayfield’s prosecution. I first brought you this story back in January, when the inspector general released a summary of the full report (PDF) which came out this Friday. In it, inspector general Glenn A. Fine found that the use of the Patriot Act “amplified the consequences” of the FBI’s misidentification of a latent fingerprint as belonging to Mayfield, when in fact it did not. The full report provides many new details about the treatment of Mayfield, who was the subject of surveillance and secret searches before he was hurriedly arrested in response to media leaks about the case. FBI examiners had wrongly identified a fingerprint found on a bag of detonators as Mayfield’s and then resisted the Spanish police’s conclusion that the print belonged to someone else, according to the report. [...] [...] A report released Friday by the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General reviewed the use of the USA Patriot Act in the case of Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield, who was wrongfully accused of involvement in the 2004 Madrid train bombings. It found that incompetence, not abuse per se, led to Mayfield’s prosecution. I first brought you this story back in January, when the inspector general released a summary of the full report (PDF) which came out this Friday. In it, inspector general Glenn A. Fine found that the use of the Patriot Act “amplified the consequences” of the FBI’s misidentification of a latent fingerprint as belonging to Mayfield, when in fact it did not. The full report provides many new details about the treatment of Mayfield, who was the subject of surveillance and secret searches before he was hurriedly arrested in response to media leaks about the case. FBI examiners had wrongly identified a fingerprint found on a bag of detonators as Mayfield’s and then resisted the Spanish police’s conclusion that the print belonged to someone else, according to the report. [...]

]]>