Well... This One Is Definitely On Obama... [View all]

[WillyT]

Ex-FBI lawyer linked to surveillance abuses poised for federal judge post
Valerie Caproni, up for judgeship in important terrorism court, likely to come under fresh scepticism in wake of NSA revelations
Spencer Ackerman in Washington - theguardian.com
Friday 6 September 2013 10.08 EDT


Caproni has come under bipartisan criticism over the years for enabling widespread surveillance later found to be inappropriate or illegal. Photograph: Getty

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A former senior FBI official implicated in surveillance abuses is poised to become a federal judge in one of the US's most important courts for terrorism cases. Valerie Caproni, the FBI's top lawyer from 2003 to 2011, is scheduled to receive a vote on Monday in the Senate for a seat on the southern district court of New York.

Caproni has come under bipartisan criticism over the years for enabling widespread surveillance later found to be inappropriate or illegal. During her tenure as the FBI's general counsel, she clashed with Congress and even the Fisa surveillance court over the proper scope of the FBI's surveillance powers.

And Caproni faces renewed skepticism for describing surveillance conducted under the Patriot Act as more limited than it actually is, now that the Guardian has revealed and the Obama administration confirmed that the National Security Agency uses the act to collect and store the telephone records of hundreds of millions of Americans.

"It is a shame that the White House has chosen to nominate former FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni to a lifelong position as a federal judge given her narrow views of Americans' privacy rights as demonstrated by her actions in the George W Bush administration," said Lisa Graves, a Justice Department official in the Clinton and early Bush administrations.

"Government officials that secretly approved of overbroad surveillance programs the public is only seeing now because of leaks, and whose testimony on the issue obscured rather than revealed these abuses, should be held to account for their actions in a public forum," said Mike German, a former FBI agent.

German, now a lawyer with the ACLU...

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More: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/06/fbi-lawyer-surveillance-judge-valerie-caproni