What are National Security Letters?

An FBI National Security Letter can demand records and silence the recipient. Secrecy turns surveillance into power without witnesses.

An FBI letter can compel a company to hand over subscriber, billing, or transactional records without advance judicial approval, then bar the recipient from speaking. That may speed genuine espionage investigations, but it also hides the demand from the people who could challenge it. A democracy cannot test secret power very well.

• What it could changeMore meaningful court review could expose demands that stretch beyond narrow national-security needs.
• How it touches todayPrivate companies can become silent intermediaries in government surveillance without customers knowing.
• Our futurePublic knowledge could shrink as more state power moves through secret letters and sealed silence.

• Civil-liberties groups argue that secrecy and the absence of advance judicial review make NSLs vulnerable to abuse and difficult for recipients to challenge effectively.eff +1
• The Second Circuit held that aspects of NSL nondisclosure requirements and limited judicial review violated the First Amendment, after which relevant statutes were amended.law
• Critics describe NSLs as capable of compelling broad financial and communications records under a gag order, making independent oversight difficult.harpers +2