FBI Monitored a Network Worth of Email Instead of Just One

Following the procedure (probably), the Federal Bureau of Investigation went to a secret intelligence court judge and got approval for surveying an email address of a suspect in an investigation going on at the time. Again according to protocol they went with the court decision to the Internet Service Provider, that served as host for the respective address, and access was granted. To all available, not just the one.

Some might call it a technical glitch, others miscommunication. The fact is that several hundred people had their entire email history downloaded and searched through by technicians with the FBI in an attempt to put together a case. The ISP set its filtering equipment to trap every message coming through and it wasn't long until officials noted that there was no way a single person could be operating such vast quantities of emails, so they went ahead and double checked every aspect, finding the problem.

An intelligence official, quoted by the San Francisco Chronicle on condition of anonymity (surveillance operations are still classified), said that "it's inevitable that these things will happen. It's not weekly, but it's common."

This comes right in the heels of the infamous and fierce debate raging in Congress, about expanding the government's authority to wiretap and giving legal immunity to private telecommunications companies that have helped in those operations. Luckily for them, it's not the Feds' fault this time, they did go through the trouble of getting a warrant and all the rest, but some of the previously given extremely generous coverage space in the media did not, hence the revision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The FBI is notorious for human rights' infringement, from dragging out surveillance far longer than the period of time authorized to digging deeper into people's lives, again, far more than it was authorized to.