30,000 national security letters a year -- each of which could target several people!!! That is a lot of info the FBI is compiling against Americans and visitors NOT suspected of being terrorists or spies.
WaPo will have this story online here SOON. They are bannering this story on page one:
A 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.
I have to commend WaPo for its reporting on privacy issues.
And of course I do think it is a HUGE issue that the FBI and other intelligence agencies are mining such massive amount of data on citizens.
More from WaPo:
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.
This is a 5,500 word story. Pretty in-depth reporting