PATRIOT (CONT)

Not all letter recipients have been as cautious as North Carolina State. A 2007 FBI audit, which sampled 10 percent of all NSLs issued since 2002, discovered hundreds of instances in which the FBI collected information it didn't have the authority to obtain. In only four cases was that improperly obtained information purged from the FBI's databases, Feingold said at last week's hearing.
A widely reported inspector general review in 2007 documented hundreds of other examples of NSL abuse, and a follow-up report released this March concluded that the FBI had failed to implement safeguards to mitigate those abuses.

Aside from the Judiciary committee's ranking member, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Penn.), only two Republicans - Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) - attended last Wednesday's hearing. As a harbinger of the legislative skirmish ahead, both men voiced strong reservations about the bill. Sessions, who once served as Alabama's attorney general, said he disagreed with a previous tightening of the national security letter provision in the Patriot Reauthorization Act of 2005, and objected to further restrictions on the FBI's use of NSLs. The limits in the proposed legislation, Sessions said, were "all to make sure that the spies and terrorists have their full rights - in fact, have more rights than drug dealers."

A distinctly different view was voiced by Specter, who complained that, when it comes to the FBI's use of NSLs, Congress currently does not have "the semblance of effective oversight."

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