Is FBI Aiding NSA’s U.S. Surveillance Efforts?

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I did some more digging on my earlier question about National Security Letters. I think I have an answer — but it just raises more questions.

I spoke with Bart Gellman, the Washington Post reporter who wrote that the FBI issued 30,000 secret National Security Letters last year — more than three times the number reported to Congress by the Justice Department.

Gellman stood by his 30,000 figure. He also pointed out — as did Hill staff I spoke with — that the Justice report does not include NSLs requesting “subscriber information.” That’s the identity of an individual associated with a phone number, an email or an IP address.

The Justice report also excludes requests for information on foreigners, but I suspect the majority of these unreported letters were for subscriber information. Which leads one to wonder — if the FBI is submitting thousands of requests to identify people at certain telephone numbers or IP addresses, what effort is generating these requests? Somewhere, something is churning out numbers that the FBI wants names for, and they don’t want to go to court for permission. Is it the NSA program? How tangled is this domestic spying web they’ve woven?

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