The House and Senate have voted to make noncompliance with a national
security letter a criminal offense. The House would also impose a
prison term for breach of secrecy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/05/AR2005110501366..html

The FBI's Secret Scrutiny
In Hunt for Terrorists, Bureau Examines Records of Ordinary Americans

By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 6, 2005; Page A01

The FBI came calling in Windsor, Conn., this summer with a document
marked for delivery by hand. On Matianuk Avenue, across from the
tennis courts, two special agents found their man. They gave George
Christian the letter, which warned him to tell no one, ever, what it
said.

Under the shield and stars of the FBI crest, the letter directed
Christian to surrender "all subscriber information, billing
information and access logs of any person" who used a specific
computer at a library branch some distance away. Christian, who
manages digital records for three dozen Connecticut libraries, said in
an affidavit that he configures his system for privacy. But the
vendors of the software he operates said their databases can reveal
the Web sites that visitors browse, the e-mail accounts they open and
the books they borrow.


Patriot Act Primer
The USA PATRIOT Act, approved overwhelmingly by Congress after the
Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, greatly expanded the government's power to
monitor, search, detain or deport suspects in terrorism-related
investigations. Text of the USA PATRIOT Act


Christian refused to hand over those records, and his employer,
Library Connection Inc., filed suit for the right to protest the FBI
demand in public. The Washington Post established their identities --
still under seal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit --
by comparing unsealed portions of the file with public records and
information gleaned from people who had no knowledge of the FBI
demand.

The Connecticut case affords a rare glimpse of an exponentially
growing practice of domestic surveillance under the USA Patriot Act,
which marked its fourth anniversary on Oct. 26. "National security
letters," created in the 1970s for espionage and terrorism
investigations, originated as narrow exceptions in consumer privacy
law, enabling the FBI to review in secret the customer records of
suspected foreign agents. The Patriot Act, and Bush administration
guidelines for its use, transformed those letters by permitting
clandestine scrutiny of U.S. residents and visitors who are not
alleged to be terrorists or spies.

The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year,
according to government sources, a hundredfold increase over historic
norms. The letters -- one of which can be used to sweep up the records
of many people -- are extending the bureau's reach as never before
into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of
ordinary Americans.

Issued by FBI field supervisors, national security letters do not need
the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge. They receive no
review after the fact by the Justice Department or Congress. The
executive branch maintains only statistics, which are incomplete and
confined to classified reports. The Bush administration defeated
legislation and a lawsuit to require a public accounting, and has
offered no example in which the use of a national security letter
helped disrupt a terrorist plot.

The burgeoning use of national security letters coincides with an
unannounced decision to deposit all the information they yield into
government data banks -- and to share those private records widely, in
the federal government and beyond. In late 2003, the Bush
administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring agents to
destroy their files on innocent American citizens, companies and
residents when investigations closed. Late last month, President Bush
signed Executive Order 13388, expanding access to those files for
"state, local and tribal" governments and for "appropriate private
sector entities," which are not defined.

National security letters offer a case study of the impact of the
Patriot Act outside the spotlight of political debate. Drafted in
haste after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the law's 132 pages wrought
scores of changes in the landscape of intelligence and law
enforcement. Many received far more attention than the amendments to a
seemingly pedestrian power to review "transactional records." But few
if any other provisions touch as many ordinary Americans without their
knowledge.

Senior FBI officials acknowledged in interviews that the proliferation
of national security letters results primarily from the bureau's new
authority to collect intimate facts about people who are not suspected
of any wrongdoing. Criticized for failure to detect the Sept. 11 plot,
the bureau now casts a much wider net, using national security letters
to generate leads as well as to pursue them. Casual or unwitting
contact with a suspect -- a single telephone call, for example -- may
attract the attention of investigators and subject a person to
scrutiny about which he never learns.

A national security letter cannot be used to authorize eavesdropping
or to read the contents of e-mail. But it does permit investigators to
trace revealing paths through the private affairs of a modern digital
citizen. The records it yields describe where a person makes and
spends money, with whom he lives and lived before, how much he
gambles, what he buys online, what he pawns and borrows, where he
travels, how he invests, what he searches for and reads on the Web,
and who telephones or e-mails him at home and at work.

As it wrote the Patriot Act four years ago, Congress bought time and
leverage for oversight by placing an expiration date on 16 provisions.
The changes involving national security letters were not among them.
In fact, as the Dec. 31 deadline approaches and Congress prepares to
renew or make permanent the expiring provisions, House and Senate
conferees are poised again to amplify the FBI's power to compel the
secret surrender of private records.

The House and Senate have voted to make noncompliance with a national
security letter a criminal offense. The House would also impose a
prison term for breach of secrecy.

entire 5-page article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/05/AR2005110501366..html

---
http://www.ElmerFudd.US/ http://www.rightard.org/ http://www.thedarkwind.org/
"Sex is only perverted if it implants voracious alien parasites in your
bladder or rectum." -- nu-monet v8.0