FBI Director Robert Mueller pleaded with senators Tuesday not to curtail
the Patriot Act that empowers the federal government to secretly obtain
personal records, although a Justice Department investigator discovered that
the bureau had failed to obey its requirements.

The problem wasn't the law, Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee;
it was the FBI.

"The statute did not cause the errors," Mueller said. "The FBI's
implementation of the statute did."

This perspective is infuriating. For the millionth time, the reason we want oversight of your agent's actions isn't because we have a problem with the abstract idea that they might collect information about terrorists, its because your agents are human, and will, intentionally or unintentionally, screw it up. The statute must change because the statute can change. There is no way to change whether or not your agents are human. Why do you people continue to insist that oversight is not necessary? Oversight is obviously necessary! The powers assumed in the past few years have been based on an assumption of perfection and benevolence on the part of police which is absolutely unheard of in the history of the world. The reality is that your are going to screw it up and you are going to hire crooked people and sometimes you are going to be enforcing crooked policies passed by corrupt politicians. That is the real world. If you don't think that police surveillance needs oversight you are living in a fantasyland, and that was the problem with these rules from the beginning.

FBI director blames agency, not Patriot Act, for abuses