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In case you were wondering what happens with unfettered access to unchecked and unaccountable power and why you don't just excuse illegal behavior outright with an "ooopsie, well let's just forget about that and move on, shall we?," here's your answer:

The report is a follow-up to an audit by the inspector general a year ago that found the FBI demanded personal data on people from banks, telephone and Internet providers and credit bureaus without official authorization and in non-emergency circumstances between 2003 and 2005.

Mueller, noting senators' concerns about Americans' civil and privacy rights, said the new report ''will identify issues similar to those in the report issued last March.'' The similarities, he said, are because the time period of the two studies ''predates the reforms we now have in place.''...

Mueller offered no additional details. Several other Justice Department and FBI officials familiar with this year's findings have said privately the upcoming report will show the letters were wrongly used at a similar rate as during the previous three years. (emphasis mine)

Gee, hope no one has a mistress or a child out of wedlock or a secret toe-tapping mens room habit they are trying to conceal. Or any business information they want to keep secure from prying eyes or the competition which might have strong ties to folks in the current Administration. Because the federal government probably has the records to show for it. Some without having to get a warrant before combing through records and e-mails and financial documents and love notes and whatever else....not having to prove they were doing so for legitimate, legal reasons. You know, the reason that the law requires them to get a warrant in the first place. It's not new, in the sense we knew about some of this last year, but it is a lot more detail and worth pointing out just how personal that data could be.

And then there is this:

...That extraordinary admission came from Assistant Attorney General for National Security Kenneth Wainstein at a breakfast on Monday, according to the Washington Post.

At the breakfast yesterday, Wainstein highlighted a different problem with the current FISA law than other administration officials have emphasized. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, for example, has repeatedly said FISA should be changed so no warrant is needed to tap a communication that took place entirely outside the United States but happened to pass through the United States.

But in response to a question at the meeting by David Kris, a former federal prosecutor and a FISA expert, Wainstein said FISA's current strictures did not cover strictly foreign wire and radio communications, even if acquired in the United States. The real concern, he said, is primarily e-mail, because "essentially you don't know where the recipient is going to be" and so you would not know in advance whether the communication is entirely outside the United States. (emphasis mine)

That would make sense since email doesn't go directly to a device in most cases, it goes to a server that holds the email until the recipient(s) come to pick up the email -- which could be and often is from different parts of the world -- think of any business traveler.

But that also means all the hysterical screaming and the dire scenarios constructed by right-wing spying proponents based on very thin evidence of what the secret court actually ruled -- all of it is just wrong.

And more to the point, the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence allowed them to be wrong for months. They allowed and facilitated their supporters to scare freedom loving people with phantoms of lost wiretaps.

No telecom immunity. Just...no.

Emptywheel parses the finer points. The ACLU has more here, here and here.