Veteran Reporter's Take on FBI Self-Subpoena Abuse

News.com's Declan McCullagh has been writing about privacy, technology, civil liberties and tech policy for almost a decade now, and last night, he posted a link-rich analysis of the National Security Letter scandal:

The odd thing is that everyone, or nearly everyone, seems to think this is entirely unexpected. In fact, it's a natural consequence of giving the federal government more and more power over the years (national security letters were made much more powerful by the Patriot Act).

Incentives matter, and the FBI has plenty of incentives to expand its power and surveillance ability and precious few incentives to preserve Americans' constitutional liberties. To give credit to EPIC, they realized this and sent a letter to the Senate in June 2006 asking for more oversight: www.epic.org/privacy/surveillance/sen_iob_letter.pdf

So have libertarian writers, who for years have called national security letters "the ultimate constitutional farce," which is about right. The letters represent FBI agents _authorizing themselves_ to seize information without bothering to get a judge's approval, after all: www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/napolitano2.html

Occasionally other evidence about illegal FBI eavesdropping comes to light, which is what I described in an article published two days before the DOJ's report: http://news.com.com/2100-1039_3-6165067.html

Read the whole thing here.