Robert Lemos

If you read one thing today, make it this anonymous submission to the Washington Post from the president of a small Internet access company. The person, whose identity and claims the Washington Post confirmed, has taken the FBI to court for issuing a National Security Letter to him requesting information on a client.

National Security Letters are government orders that haven’t been reviewed by a court, requires the recipient to turn over the asked-for information, and binds the informant to secrecy. The recipient can’t even discuss the fact that they have received a letter.

The column (registration required) underscores the recent controversy over the abuses by the U.S. government of National Security Letter as discussed in a recent report. On March 9, the U.S. Department of Justice released a report on the FBI’s use of National Security Letters, finding that the powers, as given by the USA PATRIOT Act, has been severely abused. As the Boston Globe stated at the time:

The audit released Friday found that the number of national security letters issued by the FBI skyrocketed in the years after the Patriot Act became law.

In 2000, for example, the FBI issued an estimated 8,500 letters. By 2003, however, that number jumped to 39,000. It rose again the next year, to about 56,000 letters in 2004, and dropped to approximately 47,000 in 2005.

Over the entire three-year period, the audit found the FBI issued 143,074 national security letters requesting customer data from businesses.

The FBI vastly underreported the numbers. In 2005, the FBI told Congress that its agents in 2003 and 2004 had delivered only 9,254 national security letters seeking e-mail, telephone or financial information on 3,501 U.S. citizens and legal residents over the previous two years.

In the case of the president of the small Internet access provider, the FBI–after being sued–has dropped its request but continues to bind him to secrecy. The man has continued his court case to get that part of the order lifted.

The Washington Post column hits home because it shows the personal costs and effects that these letters can have on U.S. citizens–all without the checks and balances of the judicial branch of the United States.