National Security Letters and Diminishing Privacy Rights

Abstract

Imagine you are a small-town librarian on the executive board of a nonprofit consortium of about twenty-five public libraries in Iowa. One day two agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) come to see you at work. After you greet them, they hand you a two-page letter, over official letterhead, stating that “Under the authority of Executive Order 12333, dated December 4, 1981, and pursuant to Title 18, United States Code (U.S.C.) Section 279,” you must provide to the FBI “subscriber information, billing information, and access logs of any person or entity related to” a specific Internet protocol address for a forty-five-minute period on June 3, 2008. You quickly realize that you are being asked, under authority of law, to disclose the private information of a patron using a library computer in your consortium. As you read on, you see that the letter says that a “Special Agent in Charge” has signed it and certifies that the “information sought is relevant to an authorized investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.” The letter, somewhat ominously, “advises” you that you cannot tell anyone that the FBI is seeking the information.¹