Background

• The National Security Letter (NSL)is considered a demand letter issued to a particular entity or organization (FBI, CIA, NSA DoD) to turn over various records and data pertaining to individual(s).

• The aforementioned agencies require no probable cause or judicial oversight.

• Included within the document is a gag order, preventing the recipient of the letter from disclosing that the letter was ever issued.

• The oldest NSL provisions were created in 1978 as a little-used method of circumventing the Right to Financial Privacy Act.

• In 1986, the Act was amended to compel disclosure, and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act was created with similar provisions in place.

• A 1993 amendment relaxed the restriction regarding "foreign powers" and allowed the use of an NSL to obtain information on persons not under direct investigation.

• In 2001, section 505 of the USA PATRIOT Act greatly expanded the use of the NSL.

• In 2008, Congress considered proposals to place new controls on the FBI's use of NSLs. A House bill would tighten the language governing when national security letters could be used, by requiring that they clearly pertain to investigations of a foreign power or an agent instead of just being considered "relevant" to such investigations. It would also require that the FBI destroy information that had been illegally obtained, which existing rules do not require, and it would allow the recipient of a letter to file a civil lawsuit if the missive is found to be illegal or without sufficient factual justification. A Senate bill would require the FBI to track its use of the letters more carefully and would narrow the types of records that can be obtained with a letter to those that are least sensitive. (Source: Wiki)

Debate

Country Comparison

Recent Developments

ACLU Applauds Committee Passage of National Security Letter Reform (6/24/2008)

The House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties approved legislation that would greatly reduce the scope of the National Security Letter (NSL) statute. NSLs are secret government requests for information that are used to collect private records without judicial oversight. The FBI’s gross misuse and abuse of the NSL statute has led to consecutive and embarrassing reports issued by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General. In March 2008, a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the ACLU also uncovered abuses of the NSL statute by the Department of Defense. (Source: ACLU)

Additional Information

The Justice Department's Inspector General has reported that between 2003 and 2006, the FBI issued nearly 200,000 NSLs. The inspector General has also found serious FBI abuses of the NSL power.