It seems the FBI conducts it’s own top secret signals intelligence operations. In this way it mimics spy agencies like the NSA and CIA.
The FBI’s signals intelligence activities is carried out by a secretive organization called the “Data Intercept Technology Unit”, or DITU.
The DITU is located in a heavily guarded compound at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, home of the FBI’s training academy and the bureau’s Operational Technology Division.
Its motto: “Vigilance Through Technology” – seems to suggest it all.
The DITU is responsible for “intercepting telephone calls and emails of terrorists and foreign intelligence targets inside the United States”, according to an FBI spokesperson (who declined to be named in this report).
But could there be more?
In turns out that it was the FBI that actually petitioned the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court to order Verizon Business Network Services, one of the United States’ biggest telecom carriers for corporations, to hand over the call records of hundreds of millions of its customers to the NSA (source: http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/709012/verizon.pdf).
See related video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaYTMFqmIas
The unit already works closely with major U.S. telecommunications companies — AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint — to ensure its ability to capture the telephone and Internet communications of its targets within the United States, including meta-data on millions of Americans.
A series of NSA documents alludes to FBI DITU involvement in meta data spying program (see documents, pg 7 http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/nov/01/prism-slides-nsa-document).
As such the FBI, which is the top law enforcement agency in the United States is not only complacent in the NSA spying scandal but actively part of it as well.
This is a stunning revelation!
See related article: FBI mining data directly form major Internet companies, report says http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9239899/NSA_FBI_mining_data_directly_from_major_Internet_companies_report_says