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Born at the Crest of the Empire

Friday, April 28, 2006

Somebody may be watching

From the Friday document dump. (6PM Friday, after the evening news.)

WASHINGTON (AP) - The FBI secretly sought information last year on 3,501 U.S. citizens and legal residents from their banks and credit card, telephone and Internet companies without a court's approval, the Justice Department said Friday.

It was the first time the Bush administration has publicly disclosed how often it uses the administrative subpoena known as a national security letter, which allows the executive branch of government to obtain records about people in terrorism and espionage investigations without court approval.


So, either there are 3,501 terrorists in the US, or the FBI is either abusing the Patriot Act to spy on non-terrorists, or they'e conducting warrantless searches through a patriot act workaround.

posted by mikevotes at 10:06 PM

3 Comments:

  • funny at how a reasonable person can deduce that. However, we just dont have the proper perspective to see it the way say Al Gonzales might see it.

    By Blogger Yukkione, at 11:40 PM  

  • I'm just surprised that it is only that amount of people. I would think the numbers higher myself. Seems like a conservative number to me coming from a bunch that is THAT paranoid and 'willful'.

    By Blogger sumo, at 2:15 AM  

  • Left o' center, I have given up trying to seee things the way Gonzales sees them. I never got past the fact that he signed of on an interpretation of US law that allows torture.

    Sumo, I kind of agree, but these are not the only ones being monitored, just the ones that got warrantless NS letters. And, in the paperwork obsessed and bureaucratic FBI, an NSL leaves a papertrail, so I would guess that the tend to shy away from them by and large. As we've seen from other areas of the government, the number of people under investigation is probably much larger.

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 6:42 AM  

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