The Patriot Act was officially the death of democracy, imo.
Report: FBI Problems Led to Wrongful Terror Arrest ABC News January 6, 2006, 3:15 PM
"Portland attorney Brandon Mayfield was incorrectly identified by the FBI as a suspect in the attacks because of incorrect fingerprint data. Mayfield was arrested on May 6, 2004, and secretly held as a material witness for two weeks. He was released when the Spanish National Police eventually matched the fingerprints to an Algerian national.
A review by Glenn Fine, the Justice Department's inspector general, found several problems with the actions of FBI employees, as well as systemic problems at the FBI lab in Quantico, Va.
Specifically, the unusual similarity between Mayfield's fingerprint and the fingerprint on a bag of detonators found in Madrid confused several fingerprint experts. FBI laboratory examiners identified Mayfield's fingerprint as matching a print found on a bag of detonators connected to the Madrid commuter train attack, which killed 191 people and injured almost 1,500. A court-appointed fingerprint expert also misidentified the prints.
The Spanish National Police had provided digital photographs of the prints on the detonator bag from Madrid and sent the pictures to the FBI lab, where they were entered into the bureau's computer. When no exact matches were found, a second search was performed, prompting the computer to return a list of 20 candidates whose known prints had features in common with the ones found on the detonator bag.
"We concluded that the examiners committed errors in the examination procedure, and that the misidentification could have been prevented through a more rigorous application of several principles of latent fingerprint identification," the report said.
The inspector general report also looked into whether Mayfield's conversion to Islam was a factor in the FBI's focus on Mayfield. Mayfield, a practicing Muslim, also piqued the investigators' interest because he was an attorney for a convicted terrorism suspect.
The report noted, "One of the examiners candidly admitted that if the person identified had been someone without these characteristics, like the 'Maytag Repairman,' the laboratory might have revisited the identification with more skepticism and caught the error." The Justice Department review states that Mayfield's religion and representation of a convicted terrorist contributed to the examiners failing to reconsider the fingerprint misidentification but said there was no evidence his religion played a role in the FBI prolonging the investigation.
Mayfield's attorney, however, was not satisfied with the report's conclusion."