In an article on the front page of today's Washington Post, Ellen Nakashima provides more details on data obtained by the government when NSL's are submitted to telecom's. Citing a letter from Verizon to three Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Nakashima finds that these NSL's have requested not just information on those communicating with the "target" of the investigation, but also on those who communicate with the "target's" circle:

Yesterday's 13-page Verizon letter indicated that the requests went further than previously known. Verizon said it had received FBI administrative subpoenas, called national security letters, requesting data that would "identify a calling circle" for subscribers' telephone numbers, including people contacted by the people contacted by the subscriber. Verizon said it does not keep such information.

"The privacy concerns are exponential each generation you go away from the suspect's number," said Kurt Opsahl, senior staff attorney with the EFF. "This shows that further investigation by Congress and the inspector general is critical."

Earlier this year, the Justice Department's inspector general found that the FBI may have improperly obtained phone, bank and other records of thousands of people inside the United States since 2003 by using national security letters and exigent letters, or emergency demands for records.

Michael Kortan, an FBI spokesman, said the bureau has suspended use of community-of-interest data "while an appropriate oversight and approval policy" is developed. He added that the inspector general is reviewing the use of those data.

Link:http://tinyurl.com/3yskl8

Perhaps even more disturbing, however, is that although the surveillance in these programs has been sold to the US on the basis of fighting terrorism, the government may have reached the slippery slope, and this program may have been applied to cases other than terrorism:

From January 2005 to September 2007, Verizon provided data to federal authorities on an emergency basis 720 times, it said in the letter. The records included Internet protocol addresses as well as phone data. In that period, Verizon turned over information a total of 94,000 times to federal authorities armed with a subpoena or court order, the letter said. The information was used for a range of criminal investigations, including kidnapping and child-predator cases and counter-terrorism investigations.

It is difficult to tell from this article whether any of the "emergency" requests are among those relating to non-terrorism cases, but it was my impression that terrorism was to be the only subject for the increased surveillance powers the government is defending.

I second the complaint on today's format change. War Room stories are wonderful for their brevity and relevance to what is happening during the course of the day. Having to click on each story just to read it rather than scrolling down the page is a frustrating change that may dramatically scale back my time spent here.

That was a quick correction. Losing the "continued" is a vast improvement.

Thanks for that link. I think this paragraph should be spread far and wide. Who would ever have thought that a funny little fellow who likes to dress up statues and sing with people of questionable character would write such leftist, pinko commie words as these:

The protections of the Fourth Amendment are clear. The right to protection from unlawful searches is an indivisible American value. Two hundred years of court decisions have stood in defense of this fundamental right. The state's interest in effective crime-fighting should never vitiate the citizens' Bill of Rights.

Tonight our county had our Democratic Party gala and Jim Hightower was the guest speaker. Hightower's vision of America was the perfect antidote to the National Review vision of America that Glenn has uncovered. The line above was my favorite of the night. A few other gems regarding Bush:
"100,000 sperm and he was the fastest?"
"That's a thousand dollar hat on a ten cent head."

At any rate, even though Hightower was appearing in a role as "cheerleader", he quoted poll figures and related personal experiences from his travels around the country to point out that Americans are revolting (in the active, rather than descriptive sense, of course). We are pushing back against the lies and lawlessness. However, Hightower pointed out that this is not a battle over a single election, but represents a continuing struggle:
"The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese."

The (very) non-scientific straw poll: Clinton--133, Obama--91, Kuchinich--49, Richardson--40, Biden--17, Gravel--5, Dodd--4.