Congressional Record: November 20, 2003 (Senate) Page S15275 EXPANSION OF NATIONAL SECURITY LETTER AUTHORITY IN INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2004 Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, yesterday saw passage of yet another example of this Administration's secret efforts to further expand secret powers of the FBI. The FBI can now use National Security Letters, NSLs, which do not require approval by a court, grand jury, or prosecuting attorney, to demand confidential financial records from car dealers, pawn brokers, travel and real estate agents, and other businesses, and to prohibit the business from disclosing that the records have been sought or obtained. There is no requirement that the FBI demonstrate a need for such records. It need only assert that the records are ``sought for'' an intelligence or terrorism investigation. Nor are there sufficient limits on what the FBI may do with the records or how it must store them. For example, information obtained through NSLs may be stored electronically and used for large-scale data mining operations. Congress last expanded the FBI's NSL authority in October 2001, as part of the comprehensive antiterrorism package known as the USA PATRIOT Act. Incredibly, the Intelligence Committee forced passage of this latest expansion without consulting the Judiciary Committee, which oversees both the FBI and the implementation of the PATRIOT Act. Indeed, the Committee is in the midst of holding a series of oversight hearings on the PATRIOT Act, including the very provision that has now been significantly modified. What is even more incredible is the fact that this very provision is the target of sunset legislation that I and other members of the Judiciary Committee, both Democratic and Republican, have introduced. There is no doubt that we would have meaningfully and thoroughly explored further expansion of the NSL authority had we been given the opportunity to do so. This is what the new law has done. Under the PATRIOT Act, the FBI was permitted to use NSLs to obtain records from banks and other similar financial institutions if they were ``sought for'' an intelligence or terrorism investigation. Now the term ``financial institution'' has been expanded to include a host of other businesses that have nothing to do with the business of banking, and the term ``financial record'' has been expanded to include any record held by any such business that pertains to a customer. The FBI has long had the power to obtain this sort of information, whether through a judicial subpoena or a search warrant. But with the stealth amendment of the NSL authority, the FBI can now obtain a vast amount of personal and highly confidential information without obtaining court approval, and without any other independent check on the validity or scope of the inquiry. The privacy rights of all Americans have been compromised as a result. ____________________