The Security Mentor

Suppose your marriage counselor has truly first-rate computer security, or better yet keeps everything on paper. Are your records secure?

Under the USAPATRIOT act, the FBI can demand those records by printing out and showing the counselor something called a "National Security Letter", without ever making a case to a judge that there was cause for breaching your privacy.

Let's say you trust the FBI to refrain from the systematic abuses they did in the 1960s. There's still a lot of room in between being abusive and being squeaky clean.

What about agent error, and shoddy record-keeping? Those turned up in a recent DoJ audit of the FBI's use of National Security Letters. Some were issued without approval even from the FBI managers who would normally sign them. Some were issued when there wasn't an investigation going on. Some weren't included in the reported totals of how many were issued. Emergency powers were used in non-emergency situations.

It could have been a lot worse, and I feared it would be. There were only 56,000 National Security Letters during the busiest year. The audit found only a small fraction in violation of the existing regulations.